Featuring Cheshiregaming

 On this fine Blaugust day we jumped down to another newbie to Blaugust 2023 and checked in on Cheshiregaming.

 The post I jumped into was Bloodstone Fen Meta which made me a bit nostalgic for Guild Wars 2.  Not for Bloodstone Fen but just for the "nice little touches" that Guild Wars 2 has to offer.  Most notably from a blogging perspective the ability to share information like a map waypoint that a player can use in game is cool.  So many neat little quality of life things that Guild Wars 2 features; wish some other games would follow suit!

 If you are looking for some Guild Wars 2 blogging then keep on digging into Cheshiregaming.

My Twitch 2022 Recap (lulz)

 Twitch has their 2022 recap posted.  You can check yours out here. Here is my recap:

 I lulz over this because I'll be honest I had no idea who my third most watched streamer, Mukluk, was until I looked him up.  My guess is I watched him for a Guild Wars 2 drop which goes into why I even have 500+ hours watched on Twitch: drops.  That is basically the only reason I am there outside of dropping off my Amazon Prime sub to a streamer in need.  And let's be honest; I am not watching actively 99% of the time... it's buried in a muted browser tab somewhere.

 Also lulz is BagginsTV.  Not that I don't like him or that he is not a good streamer, but the only reason I think I have hours watched there is because his stream is embedded and auto-plays on the New World Database website.

 Anyways, like my Reddit recap, 2022 was the year of New World!  

 What does your recap look like? Drop a comment.

Mounts in New World

 As mentioned in the New World September development update; mounts will be coming to Aeternum.  Here are some of my thoughts.

First I will admit that I was not one of the players that argued for mounts in the game.  The world of Aeternum feels small enough that even the farthest depots are not that tough of a run.  Part of what makes it feel small is that it is jam packed with things to stop and do along the way; something of interest is never more than a few steps away.  Mounts would ruin that feeling.

However, now that we've seen how BIG the new zone Brimstone Sands mounts start to make some more sense.  Before we get into what I would like to see out of mounts lets list a few things I don't want.

1. No random creature mounts; no wolf mounts, no elk mounts.  No flying mounts!  Just stick with horses please.
2. No mounts in town.  It is crowded enough already; we don't need mounts in town.
3. No insta-mounts; make it a decision to call a mount and make use of them.

With the "please don't" covered; lets look at a few things I'd like to see starting with a few ideas I'd lift from other games.

The first idea I'd steal is the way Roach (the horse) works in The Witcher 3 (and no I am not talking about Roach randomly appearing on a roof -- see picture above). When you call your horse in The Witcher it appears from just off screen; no magic horse from your pants.  This obviously is difficult to pull off in a multiplayer game, but if the mount could appear from a cloud of azoth and charge towards you that'd be neat. 

Secondly, the horse in The Witcher will automatically follow paths/roads and the player can basically AFK to their destination if its at the end of the road.  This would be awesome in my book; I already spend a ton of time on the roads of Aeternum and the world is beautiful so I'd love kicking back and watching the scenery pass by.

In Albion Online players can have pack mounts that can both be ridden but also can be used for increased storage as long as the player stays in range.  This would be awesome with the gathering that can be done in New World; I can just imagine an hours long logging spree without having to stop every few minutes to zip back to town.  Since we don't want mounts out in town the pack mount would just be stabled with the extra storage capacity available just like town storage.

Next I'd steal a couple features of Guild Wars 2 mounts.  First, the way you unlock mounts via in game quests and objectives is a great way to engage the player instead of just making it something they purchase.  Next progressing your mount so that it can do more and more makes the mount system in Guild Wars 2 its own entire horizontal end game progression system.  Lastly the way mounts control in Guild Wars 2 is definitely worth stealing.  Mounts in Guild Wars 2 have unique control characteristics (which can improve with leveling them up); not all mounts can stop or turn on a dime - some are slower to turn and some are faster to stop and some are slow but can bounce really high.  

While we don't want the flying or "silly" side of Guild Wars 2 mounts (for example the kangaroo mount that is meant for jumping puzzles) we want the core concept that mounts are their own track of content for the player to explore, progress, and then ultimately feel like they have some skill in using rather than just being a flat speed boost.

Another idea I'd like to see mounts take on is a role in combat of some sort with the possibility for armor that gives them different abilities just like light/medium/heavy armor for players.  I don't want the combat aspects to be defining but whenever I think of mounts in games I also think of charging down my enemies, flying off the mount, and launching into an attack.  If my enemy is taking off on a mount I want mechanisms to knock them off and engage them in combat.

I am hopeful that there is some care and thought put into mounts for New World so they do not just become a visual speed boost.  They need to fit into the game just as any other system.  If we look at things like music became a tradeskill and how musical instruments fit into crafting then I'd hope to see mounts and mount accessories fit right in.  And I really, really like the idea of mounts appearing out of a mist of azoth at full gallop when called.

Want to mount up?  Leave a comment.

Why I'll probably buy Guild Wars 2: Path of Fire

Arena Net is counting down towards Sept 22nd and the launch of Guild Wars 2's (GW2) second expansion; Path of Fire.  The game continues to be the last-game-standing of the post-World of Warcraft AAA MMOs (and deservedly so).

While I have not played GW2 in a while (PLUNKBAT having stolen much of my time recently) I am still likely to buy this expansion.

Why you might wonder?

The answer is simple; there is no subscription or "pay 2 win".  I can come back to GW2 whenever I want and pick up where I left off.  Sure I may have to invest some time in reading up on the most recent meta builds or grind out some mastery skill, but for the most part GW2 is pick up and go-go-go for any returning player.

This is the number one redeeming quality about GW2 and reminds me of days gone by when games were games and not just a series of money-sucking crates, DLCs, keys, etc.  So I will likely buy Path of Fire and jump back in for a few dozen hours and then I'll shelf GW2 as I always do.  Then I'll wait for the next expansion.

I would encourage anyone else pining for the days of MMOs gone by to do the same.  Companies like Arena Net deserve our support for making quality games with upfront costs in a world of get-your-first-hit-free-but-pay-up-in-the-end.

What I'm Looking Forward to in 2016

2015 is gone, 2016 has arrived.

Here is a quick list of a few things I am looking forward to:

1. Green Bay Packers play off games.  The packers are in the play offs once again and I am hoping for another magical run.  This year's team has been in  funk to end the season, but I truly believe in "any given Sunday".

2. Progress on Kickstarter projects I've backed.

Camelot Unchained (CU) is progressing; slowly.  I am looking forward to the work that Mark and team get done this year and hoping for my beta access by year's end.

Crowfall feels like it is moving along faster than CU, but that may just be the "making of" documentary style of communication that Crowfall is using to keep us up to date.  I am looking forward to many of the concepts behind Crowfall.  Another hopeful beta by years end.

Secret Hitler is, by all accounts, an impressive party board game that solves many of the faults of games such as The Resistance.  This is pretty much a guaranteed 2016 delivery and I look forward to playing it with friends alongside rounds of Good Cop/Bad Cop and Batman Love Letter.

3. Back into Minecraft.

"We found a giant cave in Minecraft!" The quote, from my six year old son, warms this gamer's heart (pun intended).  I am back into Minecraft as my son begins his journey into a game that is as magical for him as it was for me when I first picked it up.  Minecraft is one of the best games I've ever played and I am stoked to be sharing it with my son.

4. Guild Wars 2 wealth building

I tipped over 4,000 gold in Guild Wars 2 (GW2) in 2015 and thats just liquid gold.  If I counted total account value of what I've dumped into ascended gear, gem purchases, and general non-frugal spending I am sure its in the tens of thousands of gold.  Maybe in 2016 I will get back to actually playing through content (I've only done a single zone of the expansion and still have yet to complete my personal story and have not unlocked any of the full spec lines).

I hear that there is a huge World vs World (WvW aka wuvwuv) update coming.  As WvW was my first passion in Guild Wars 2 (and my first heartbreak) I am interested in what Arenanet pulls off.  From some of the leaked information (sorry no links to the leaks) the approach using Guild Alliances instead of arbitrary servers that no longer exist (due to the megaserver tech used now) is interesting and exactly what I've recommended for over a year to bring the "Guild Wars" back to Guild Wars 2.

I am also interested to follow the PvP leagues.  I am not dedicated enough to make any decent progress in the leagues myself, but I do pride myself in so far having a > 50% win ratio in the lowest bracket.  The PvP balance of GW2 is interesting and best equated to watching the pro Magic: The Gathering (MtG) scene.  There is overpowered team comps currently just as there is overpowered decks from time to time in MtG.  Casually observing the developers as they fix these situations has always fascinated me even if I am not "in the meta" myself.

5. Maybe blogging?

I may blog a bit again in 2016.  Anything is possible in a new year!

Guild Wars 2 Heart of Thorns

Via the Twitters: Guild Wars 2 expansion, Heart of Thorns, announced.

To which I say:

Why am I playing Archeage?

The question dawned on me last night: why am I playing Archeage?  I wasn't playing Archeage at the time.  I was playing Guild Wars 2 and rolling through the beginner Sylvari area as a level 59 Necromancer and I was having more fun than at any moment in 35 levels of Archeage.  I dinged 60 in short order, completed some more hearts (Guild Wars 2's version of quests), and tagged along with a few players running completing dynamic events.

Like Guild Wars 2 (GW2), I got into Archeage for the promise of the player contested end game.  In GW2 it was the end game World vs World vs World (affectionately known as WuvWuv).  In Archeage it is the end game promise of open sea pirating, castle sieges, home ownership, and exceptional breast physics.  The journey to get to these end game states was not going to weigh on me.  I am an MMO veteran since the days of MUDs.  Grinding is an accepted activity.  There is not game without pain first.

The actual truth of the matter is: I am an MMO veteran.  I'm sick of the grind.  I'm tired of chasing the plus one shiny.  Here is the heart of Archeage's problem.  There is literally not a game while leveling.  The questing and leveling is generic.  Quest givers are almost always situated within a split second walk of the end target.  There is no encouragement to explore off the beaten path.  In contrast, GW2 rewards me for every single thing I do.  GW2 guides players to explore everywhere and do everything and now with their megaserver technology there is always other people to play with.

Archeage questing and leveling is quintessential grind.  It serves no purpose.  I am not "learning the game" as so often is used as a defense for the leveling grind.  I don't feel like I am building towards anything.  I've been using the same four or so attacks since I first started the game.  There is no incentive for me to change up how I attack the content.  Target, 1, 2, 3, 4.  Repeat until dead.  It is mind-numbing.

All of this boredom is occurring while I read about rifts, and open sea pirates, and castles getting claimed and all of the things that I don't get to do because I'm locked into immortal grinding hell with the next exclamation point.  Compare to Guild Wars 2; at any time I am a couple clicks away from a world boss or WvWvW match or a random walk away from engaging content.  Everything, again, rewards the player in GW2.  I really don't have any reason to want to skip to level 80.  I am actually "learning the game" as I level.  Archeage, as a freemium game, really needs an option to pay up to get to the end game instantly.  I have (had?) enough interest to pay up once and get to a point where I could start what interested me in the game: housing, pirating, breasts.

The irony of all this is that Archeage has huge issues with a burgeoning playerbase seeking more land, more boats, more everything that is not the leveling grind.  All of the questing areas could just as easily be turned into housing areas and land would hopefully open to the masses.  Give players the ability to put quest givers in their home.  There are so many other ways for Archeage to present itself so that all of the cool things that it offers are part of the game.

Why am I playing Archeage? I really don't know.  It's fun from the perspective of promise but the actual journey is one I am thinking I'd rather not take.  There are other games, like Guild Wars 2, which does the "free 2 play" moniker better justice by asking for my money up front and giving me a good experience on the back end.

Guild Wars 2: Trait Guide by Level and Zone

With the recent changes to Guild Wars 2 the process to acquire traits changed from a model of buying skill books at certain levels to gathering the traits from the world via various means.  The traits are available still from a vendor but they cost gold and skill points; both of which are sparse for the average player in Guild Wars 2.  Fortunately a reddit poster has put together an excellent guide for the traits broken down by zone and level.

The text is inserted after the jump:

Guild Wars 2 MEGASERVER Impressions

The Guild Wars 2 April 2014 feature pack (aka patch aka update aka the "new" shiny) hit clients this week and along with it Arena Net unleashed the MEGASERVER (yes; you have to type it in all caps because it contains the word MEGA).  Now, the technology has not enveloped all zones at this time, but a few zones got the early MEGASERVER treatment.  I was able to venture into the MEGA version of Brisban Wildlands and experience the technology first hand.  Here are my impressions.

"WTF!? someone just helped me back up"  The statement was odd for me to make in /map chat.  I had spent a lot of time in the Brisban Wildlands as of late eating dirt and it was fairly odd to have another player present to help me back up this time.  There simply wasn't supposed to be more than a few players in this zone at any given time and there certainly wasn't supposed to be any working on the event the same event at the same time.  Let alone was there supposed to be one there to save my warrior from a tough tangle with a veteran.

In fact, Brisban Wildlands was hopping.  It was a happening place, if such a thing means something.  I was absolutely in awe of the number of players moving through the zone and elated at the pace of events occurring.  My map was full of orange circles and rapidly depleting orange bars appeared in my notification area.

What kind of bizarro world was I in?  This wasn't Queensland!  This wasn't a living event zone!  This was the boring and forgotten Brisban Wildlands!  There shouldn't be anything more than those one or two newbie Asura players that don't know any better!  Truth be told I was learning very quickly that the MEGASERVER technology was at work ensuring my lonely adventuring was no more.

Color me impressed with the MEGASERVER.  It was my most anticipated feature with the patch (unlike the majority that were hyped on the wardrobe system which has turned into a complete mess post-patch) and it has lived up to my expectations.  It is a truly marvelous change for the game and Arena Net should make sure 100% of their effort is placed behind rolling this out to every zone in the game.  I can't help but believe there are players leaving every day because they get sick of boring game play in empty zones.  Dynamic events sell Guild Wars 2 and with zones full of people those events are almost always happening.

In conclusion, the MEGASERVER is MEGA awesome.

Guild Wars 2 MEGA MEGA MEGA MEGA SERVER

THIS SUNDAY ONLY.  MONSTER MONSTER MONSTER TR... OOPS I MEAN... MEGA MEGA MEGA SERVER!

If this was posted on a April 1st I would have suspected shenanigans, but as it is now April the second and impossible for me to be tricked any longer I must declare that the Guild Wars 2 Megaserver is a real thing.  Traditional MMO servers are gone and in their place is one super megaserver that will host all users via various instances of each zone.  World vs World vs World will still be separated along old server assignments.  This is an exciting change for Guild Wars 2.

First it is worth noting that this is NOT equivalent to EVE Online's single universe.  In EVE there is only one copy of each "zone".  In Guild Wars 2 (GW2) the world size is limited so there will be copies of each zone which will be referred to as instances.  It would be crazy to even think about all GW2 players being stuck in the same tiny maps.

The biggest benefit to this systems is that lower popularity zones will now be more populated.  As I've recently returned to Guild Wars 2 after a hiatus from video gaming in general (and this blog if you've noticed my lack of 2014 activity) I immediately noticed how few folks were in the starting and mid-level zones.  Aside from the "champ trains" rolling over Queensland I was pretty much flying solo on my warrior and necromancer on the dynamic events.  That certainly doesn't feel massive or multiplayer.

The apparent downside is trying to get grouped correctly with your friends and guild mates, but Arena Net seems to have some plans to avoid this problem.  Players will be able to join parties and then get placed in the same instance of a zone as their fellow party members.  The overall system will aggregate data on players such as language preference, playing habits with guild members of friends, and every time a zone is entered those variables will be weighed to hopefully place the player in the most logical instance.  For a solo player like myself this won't really matter other than the fact I may actually see a friendly face and get to complete some of the harder events in the less visited zones.

There is a great chart from Arena Net's testing of the system showing the increase in player activity per map instance (yes that is +225% for each map instance on average):

Metric	Change
Average population per map copy	+225%
Player goes to the same map as his or her party	+25%
Average population from the same party as the player on joined map	+36%
Average population from the same guild as the player on joined map	+5%
Average population from the same home world as the player on joined map	+6%
Average population speaking the same language as the player on joined map	+41%

Tagging along with that this addresses one of my biggest heartaches with Guild Wars 2 and it's dynamic events system.  So much of my playing time was spent in the same zone because that is where the players were and that is where the events were being chained together.  It was a terribly boring existence in almost any other zone.  Now at least there is hope that every zone will be packed with players as I suspect worldwide there will always be a good number of folks looking to be in every zone of the game.  It will be very cool to experience a new trip to level 80 on my new characters than what I experienced last time I leveled to 80 by literally never moving outside of Kessex Hills and Harathi Highlands.

The most amazing part about this change is that it is not the only big change happening for Guild Wars 2 this month.  There are several big system changes slated for the April 15th patch.  It is indeed an exciting time to be playing Guild Wars 2 (though I still maintain the combat is crap... but I can still have fun with it).

Judged: Guild Wars 2

Better late than never. Right? Right? Tap tap… is this thing on. Ok, there we go.

After a few restarts, I’ve reached level 80 in Guild Wars 2. (pause for applause)

This push was with an Asuran Guardian and in less than 40 hours /played I was level 80. (pause for applause)

I enjoyed my trip to 80. Leveling in GW2 is a simple process. Every action a player takes, from harvesting to crafting to killing to exploring, results in experience that contributes towards leveling. Each zone is broken down into “hearts” and dynamic events that also result in experience bonuses when completed. Zones scale players to the level of zone allowing players to play in any level zone they choose. In combination this makes leveling in Guild Wars 2 very easy and players can feel rewarded, experience-wise, for everything they do no matter where they do it.

However, with the ease of leveling and being rewarded based on their actual level in any zone, the system erodes the motivation to explore the world. Once I hit Kessex Hills and Harathi Highlands I was completing events in chains and gaining 3-4 levels per play session. Plus the current live event, Tower of Nightmares, was centered in Kessex Hills which meant that the frequency with which the events in the zone completed was increased exponentially. At one point I was literally just running from spot to spot and collecting enough experience for 25% of a single level. It seemed crazy at the time that I would move away from that gravy train of experience since the leveling curve in GW2 is flat.

I leveled to 70+ by playing in the aforementioned zones which are meant only for level 15-35 players. In terms of world completion I only hit 19%. This is all possible because of the level down mechanic which balances the player’s level (and thus reduces their inherent strength) to match the content in the zone, but it continues to provide rewards consistent with the player’s actual level as the content is evenly matched by the downgraded player level. This was a refreshing mechanic considering how most MMOGs like GW2 are designed the complete opposite and aim to punish players that don’t play in the zones that are on the cutting edge of their level range.

Yet, even though I was generously rewarded for doing what I wanted, I found myself feeling cheated once I hit 80 and I started exploring many of the zones I had not visited during leveling. There were so many events and story lines I had missed and at level 80 the progression goes from vertical to horizontal so there was little incentive for me to go and visit.

Experience is still worth gaining as each level of experience after 80 generates a skill point (which in turn can be turned into skill unlocks or converted to other rewards). However, experience gain is not a driving force at level 80 and outside of gaining karma from unfinished hearts or going for world completion I found nothing to push me towards investigating the 80% of the world I had yet to visit.

And looking further into the horizontal progression model of level 80 GW2 I quickly realized that the “path of least resistance” was the dominant theme. This pushed me further away from visiting the higher level zones as I found out about min/max things such as the Queensland champion trains. Basically, one of the most efficient gold and karma gaining methods is for level 80 players to just repeatedly complete the event chains in the level 1-15 zone (this is possible because, again, the level down mechanic balances power levels while maintaining the level appropriate rewards regardless of zone level). This simply was not appealing to me even though I’ve been known now and again to get my farm on in many an MMOG.

Some experienced GW2 players may try to point out that it is actually dungeons where the real “time vs reward” battle is won and I would probably not argue with them. However, for my tastes, I found the dungeons in GW2 to be Boring with a capital B. For the most part dungeons come down to one mechanic and one mechanic only: damage per second. DPS is king in GW2. Group healing and tanking are replaced by individual player mechanics. Every class has its own self-heal and group-based heals are weak and ineffective in dungeons. Tanking is non-existent as damage mitigation is all reliant on dodging by each player individually.

On top of this the damage-focused combat, the dungeons have been min/maxed to the extreme and outside of the occasional group looking to complete the story modes, players are looking at speed runs aimed at knocking the dungeons out quickly for maximum gain. That means even further min/max to the damage per second making everyone, regardless of class, shooting for the same exact berserker based equipment. It is just a terrible model and depletes dungeons of any sense of awe or adventure. They are simply a numbers game.

Unfortunately the poor dungeons just highlight the underlying problem with GW2: the combat system. It is fun when playing solo and makes complete sense one on one versus a creature or another player. In fact, avoiding other players for the majority of my leveling (outside of the Kessex Hills events), was the key to me lasting until level 80 this time around because once more than a couple players show up the combat breaks down and becomes devoid of feedback to the players. The sheer number of times I’ve randomly died in a group of players without a single clue as to what was about to or actually hit me is insane. Throw in champion boss enemies that are all just about standing around and beating on them and you may as well just throw the action combat out the window because it’s pointless in a game meant for players to play together. I didn’t even bother to mention the completely insane over use of area of effect skills and spells.

Fortunately World vs World vs World saves everything. Right? The Wuv d Wuv, the WuvWuv, the WvWvW, the promise of Guild Wars 2! Wrong. It’s crap. It’s so crap that I hate to even waste time typing about it. The combat problems from PvE are simply multiplied out tenfold as even more players are crowded into even smaller areas where even more AoE can be dropped. Defense? Impossible. WvW is all about zerging from point A to B to C and hoping your zerg doesn’t meet a bigger zerg that will wipe it out. It’s more efficient to let a capture point be lost than it is to attempt and defend it. Even if a good defense is put up, the doors to the keep are going to fall in a couple minutes and the keep’s champion even faster. There is no hope for a smaller defensive force to prevail. If you aren’t in the zerg you are just wasting your time.

Now I’m just angry as I type about the aspects I don’t like about Guild Wars 2. I could continue on and break down the Trading Post that makes ZERO logical sense related to the game or I could bash the completely one-dimensional crafting system but that would just grind my gears even further. In conclusion the same things that caused me to stop playing GW2 the first few times around are the same reasons that I’ve stopped playing it again after finally reaching level 80 with a character. The “action combat” makes combat feel floaty and unpredictable. Horizontal progression is just a clever way of saying grind. The use of AoE is completely out of control.

The game is absolutely gorgeous from a world design perspective, but it does nothing to encourage the exploration of or use of that world on a regular basis. Over all, the concepts of GW2 are great on paper but they are all poor in execution. I would love, and would pay handsomely, to play the game that GW2 was on paper before it launched.

Guild Wars 2 going no where (and some pics)

Guild Wars 2 is not perfect (actually quite far from it), but it does enough things right to keep me entertained. I am level 26 on my Norn thief, Heartless Foe.  The average level of players according to most polls of MMO veterans is in the 50 to 60 range.  I'm behind; way behind.  And I don't care.  Guild Wars 2 leveling is fast and I've found that I have no reason to rush it because Guild Wars 2 is not going anywhere nor is its content.

As an MMO vet, I should be embarrassed at what happened last night and this morning.  I played for almost three hours between the two and only gained a couple levels.  The entire time I was out and about doing things and having fun.  Before I knew it I had moved onto a new zone, Plains of Ashford, and started in on the "hearts" and various points of interest.  I was cruising along having participated in a few events when it struck me.  This zone was a level 1-15 zone meant for new players.  I was level 25 at the time.

Guild Wars 2 doesn't punish players for being in lower level zones and it levels-down your avatar seamlessly to make the zone still a challenge.  Experience gains from killing monsters is not a large portion in any leveling and the experience gained from the events is generous.  The leveling curve is flat, so whether I level in a lower level zone or a higher one doesn't really matter.  In fact, as the newbie zones start to wind down in activity, there is a fat and happy bonus for killing some of the monsters that haven't been knocked off in a while (I was seeing 40 bonus experience in some cases, 2x what an equal level kill would net in a zone my level).

Even with the game design in mind, I am still a bit shocked how long it took me to even register the fact that the creatures I was slaying were in the single digits for levels.  The loot as well was working out; scaling to somewhat meet my level (albeit about 5 levels low, but still that was 15 levels higher than what I was killing).

Funnier yet is that I came into the zone through a gate from Diessa Plateau and immediately walked into a dynamic event that had spawned veteran (aka hard mode) units that quickly did me in.  A quick re-spawn and I was able to join the fray and see the event to conclusion.  In past MMOs entering a lower level zone meant enabling EZ mode.  Not so in Guild Wars 2.

Guild Wars 2 is refreshing and with no subscription to pay there is no impetus for me to put metal to the grind stone.  I can do what I want, when I want and most of the time feel rewarded for it.  There is more to it than the meager little bit I passed along here.  Tons of tiny little things is really what makes Guild Wars 2 and without these nuances, the game could easily fall flat.  Again, I highly recommend Guild Wars 2 to any MMO veteran.

And picture time:

Guild Wars 2 9/1 Status

Another day, another Guild Wars 2 update:

• Account Security

Read this! If you don't want your account hacked, don't use the same email address and password for Guild Wars 2 that you've used for another game or web site. Hackers have big lists of email addresses and passwords that they've harvested from malware and from security vulnerabilities in other games and web sites, and they're systematically testing Guild Wars 2 looking for matching accounts.

We're doing everything we can to protect you. But to protect you in this case, we have to start with, "the hacker knows this person's account name and password; now how do we keep him from stealing the account?" That's hard to protect against. Don't let it get to that point. Please immediately change your password to a new, strong, unique password that you've never used anywhere else.

• Hacked Accounts

Our customer support team is prioritizing tickets from customers with hacked accounts or who are otherwise blocked from logging into the game. If your account was hacked, please follow these instructions for submitting a ticket, to make sure that your ticket is correctly prioritized and to make sure you're submitting all the information we need to restore your access.

For hacked accounts, expect a response within 72 hours. As of this writing we're working on tickets submitted August 30. If you submitted a hacked account ticket on August 29 or earlier, and haven't received a response yet, your ticket may not be correctly prioritized. In that case, please submit a new ticket using the above instructions, and in the title write, "Hacked Account - Ticket submitted August 2x - Ticket number xxxxxx-xxxxxx" (fill in the date and ticket number), and we will prioritize your existing (August 29 or earlier) ticket.

• Reset Password

We're leaving the "reset password" feature disabled for now. If you forgot your password, please contact the customer support team. We're leaving this disabled for now because we believe that a significant number of customers are unaware that hackers have the passwords for their email accounts. If we enable "reset password", a hacker who can get into an email account can use that access to get into the associated Guild Wars 2 game account.

• Email Authentication

Email authentication is a feature we use to prevent hackers from gaining access to an account even if they know the account name and password.

We suffered an outage of email authentication mails today, preventing players from authorizing logins from new locations. This is now resolved. When you receive an email authentication message, or any other email fromnoreply@guildwars2.com, do not mark the email as spam! If you do, your email provider may prevent you from seeing any future email authentication messages.

• Parties, Guilds, etc.

We've made significant fixes to parties and guilds. However, you may still see intermittent outages. These outages cause symptoms such as party members not appearing on the map, party members not staying in the same overflow servers as they travel between maps, party members not joining dungeons together, and guild invites not working.

• Trading Post

We're periodically opening the Trading Post for testing. This morning it was open to all players for six hours. As of this writing, the Trading Post is offline so we can apply further bug fixes and performance improvements.

This morning during testing, some users purchased items and didn't immediately receive them, or sold items and didn't immediately receive the gold. We do have record of these transactions and are working on completing them. Check the "pick up" tab on your commerce panel to see if your transaction has completed.

• PvP Tournaments

PvP tournaments were temporarily disabled today. We have now restored them.

• World v. World

World v. World matches are now updating daily. We're running 24-hour matches to balance servers.

• Worlds

We added three new worlds in Europe on Thursday, and three new worlds in America on Friday, and increased the population limits on all worlds.

• Overflow

During this initial surge of high concurrency, and especially while most characters are low-level and thus playing in the same starting areas, it's common for players to be directed to overflow servers. If you want to play with a friend, but you're not on the same overflow servers, you can form a party together, then right-click on your friend's portrait in the party list and click "join".

We expect the use of overflow servers to naturally subside as players spread out more through the world.

• Botting and exploits

It is our policy to permanently ban accounts engaged in botting and exploits, and we're ramping up to do that.

If you discover an exploit in the game, do not exploit it or publicize it, but instead please notify us immediately at this new email address: exploits (at) arena (dot) net. (This email address is for notifying us of emergency exploits. We cannot respond individually to questions sent to this address.)

• Forums

Our most important priority at the moment is to ensure that the game runs stably and flawlessly. So as to not create additional demand on our infrastructure and on our programming team, we made the decision not to open the forums until the initial mass influx of players has calmed down a bit.

• Next software updates

We're making non-disruptive changes throughout the day. We'll publish the next back-end server update tonight at midnight Seattle time. The game may be unavailable for approximately 20-60 minutes while we perform this update.

Guild Wars 2 8/31 Status

Arena.net is certainly living up to their communication promise.  Here is the update for today, as copied from Reddit.

submitted 2 hours ago by ArenaNetTeam [+2]

This is the current status of the most important issues we're tracking with Guild Wars 2 live service.

This status information is also available on the Guild Wars 2 wiki[1] . Check there for the most recent information.

Account security - Protect your account! We've seen hackers systematically scan email addresses and passwords harvested from other games, web sites, and trojans to see if they match Guild Wars 2 accounts. We've taken steps to protect our players from this, but we need your help too. Make sure that you use a strong, unique password forGuild Wars 2 that you've never used anywhere else. For best security, use a unique email address too, and see ourblog post[2] for more tips.

Email authentication - We now have email authentication enabled for all players who have validated their email addresses. This feature sends an email whenever it detects a login attempt to your account from a location you haven't played from before, asking you to allow or deny the login.

We've learned of an incompatibility between email authentication and older versions of Internet Explorer. We're working on a fix, which we expect to deploy tomorrow.

If you're not receiving account verification emails or account authentication emails, please check your junk/spam folders, and add noreply@guildwars2.com[3] to your safe senders list.

Parties, guilds, etc. - We've made significant fixes to parties and guilds. However, you may still see intermittent outages. These outages cause symptoms such as party members not appearing on the map, party members not staying in the same overflow servers as they travel between maps, and guild invites not working.

Trading Post - Yesterday we opened the Trading Post for a random, rotating 50% of users. After gathering data from yesterday's tests, we applied a number of fixes and performance improvements, and are preparing a larger-scale test today.

Tournament Rewards - We believe we've addressed the problem with tournament chests not appearing. Let us know if you still see any issues with this.

World v. World - We're aware the world v. world matches have not been resetting properly. We're preparing an update to fix this. Once the issue is fixed, we'll start running 24-hour matches to balance servers.

Worlds - We added three new worlds in Europe yesterday, three new worlds in America today, and increased the population limits on all worlds.

Overflow - During this initial surge of high concurrency, and especially while most characters are low-level and thus playing in the same starting areas, it's common for players to be directed to overflow servers. If you want to play with a friend, but you're not on the same overflow servers, you can form a party together, then right-click on your friend's portrait in the party list and click "join".

We expect the use of overflow servers to naturally subside as players spread out more through the world.

Botting - We suspended accounts of 750 players running bots. We're ramping up and will soon apply permanent bans for cases of substantial botting.

Exploits - If you discover an exploit in the game, do not exploit it or publicize it, but instead please notify us immediately at this new email address: exploits (at) arena (dot) net.

Forums - Our most important priority at the moment is to ensure that the game runs stably and flawlessly. So as to not create additional demand on our infrastructure and on our programming team, we made the decision not to open the forums until the initial mass influx of players has calmed down a bit.

Wiki - We increased wiki server capacity to address issues users are seeing. We plan to start posting these updates to the wiki, as long as the wiki can handle the traffic.

Next software updates - We're making non-disruptive changes throughout the day. We'll publish the next back-end server update tonight at midnight Seattle time. The game may be unavailable for approximately 20-60 minutes while we perform this update.

Guild Wars 2 Updates

Arena Net has posted their progress on the Guild Wars 2 launch and planned updates and fixes they have in the pipeline over at Reddit.  Re-posted below:

by ArenaNetTeam [+1]

This is the current status of the most important issues we're tracking with Guild Wars 2 live service.

Account security - We're seeing an uptick in reports of account theft and attempted account theft. We believe hackers are using databases of email addresses and passwords stolen from other games and web sites, and pre-existing trojan horses, to search for matching Guild Wars 2 accounts which they attempt to compromise. To prevent this, we have temporarily disabled the "reset password" feature, and we're working to bring email authentication online. To protect yourself, please ensure that you use a unique password for Guild Wars 2 that you don't use for any other game, email account, forum or web account.

Email authentication - Email authentication is a feature that notifies you if someone tries to log into your account from a location you've never logged in from before. Thus, even if someone guesses your game password, he can't log in unless he also guesses your email account password. You can make email authentication even more secure by using an email provider that supports two-factor authentication, such as Google[1] or Yahoo[2] , and taking advantage of that. We're currently preparing email authentication and intend to deploy it in a phased rollout, starting on Thursday, August 30.

Parties, guilds, etc. - Parties, guilds, and other social features are periodically failing. This causes issues such as party members not appearing on the map, and party members not staying in the same overflow servers as they travel between maps. This happens particularly during times of peak usage. We're working to fix related problems and mitigate this issue with each subsequent update.

Worlds - Many worlds are filling up. We're keeping the number of worlds constrained so that worlds stay well populated even after the initial surge of high concurrency. However, we will add worlds as necessary. As of Wednesday, August 30, all German language worlds are full and all French language worlds are at high usage, so we're adding two new German language worlds and one new French language world.

Overflow worlds - During this initial surge of high concurrency, and especially while many characters are low-level and thus playing in the same starting areas, it's common for players to be directed to overflow maps. If you want to play with a friend, but you’re not on the same overflow map, you can form a party together, then right-click on your friend's portrait in the party list and click "join". Note that this functionality is sometimes intermittently unavailable due to the "parties, guilds, etc." issues noted above.

Trading Post - We're working to bring the Trading Post back online. To help test, we've temporarily made it available to a random 15% of players, while we work to resolve remaining capacity constraints that will allow us to open it to everyone.

In-game mail - We detected a potential abuse of the in-game mail system and have temporarily disabled in-game mail to prevent any such abuse. We'll reenable it soon, hopefully in tonight's update.

Botting - We'll start substantial banning of bots on Wednesday, August 29. Since we're currently seeing widespread casual, unsophisticated botting, we will start with 72-hour bans for first offenses. In the coming days, as we address the casual botting problem, we plan to switch to our normal policy of permanently banning anyone who runs a bot.

Forums - Our most important priority at the moment is to ensure that the game runs stably and flawlessly. So as to not create additional demand on our infrastructure and on our programming team, we made the decision not to open the forums until the initial mass influx of players has calmed down a bit.

Next software updates - The next update of the game server and back-end server software will take place tonight at midnight Seattle time. The game may be unavailable for approximately 20-60 minutes while we perform the update. We expect this update to have fixes for email authentication and in-game mail. Our continued work on the Trading Post is not tied to game updates, so we will continue to test Trading Post updates throughout the day.

Guild Wars 2 Initial Impressions

Guild Wars 2 head started on Friday shortly before midnight.  I was able to log in immediately to the Maguuma server and get started on my Norn thief, Heartless Foe, and my Human ranger, Heartless Gamer.  (Heartless Foe is a throwback to my Warrior/Necro character name from Guild Wars 1).  Guild Wars 2 immediately lives up to many of it's expectations by improving and simplifying many MMO tropes, but at the same time there are some core issues that hold it back.

Upon logging in the first enhancement is immediately visible: overflow servers.  This is the first MMO launch in recent memory where the word "login queue" didn't apply.  Instead, extra players are thrown into an instanced server where they can play and progress waiting to join the main server.  The downside is that right now overflow servers make playing with friends difficult, but to me its a better solution than NOT playing the game while watching a login queue.  Playing will always win the war against NOT playing.

As far as the actual game goes; Guild Wars 2 is a brilliant package.  There is a lot to like, from the excellent world/zone maps, "quest" design, and graphics, to the little things such as the collections tab, waypoint system, and emotes.  Without spending too much time droning on about the nuances, suffice to say that Guild Wars 2 listened and executed well in regards to improving on many little annoyances of MMOs.  Anyone that has experienced MMOs for the past several years will be spoiled by Guild Wars 2's feature list.

However, I can't put Guild Wars 2 on too high of a pedestal as there are some problematic core items that have already started nagging on my brain.  First and foremost is the combat which works somewhat well in small scale, but is a complete clusterfuck once more than five people show up.  Worst of all, it clearly seems to have been designed to be a clusterfuck in certain situations.  In the open World vs World PvP map or large public quests (aka dynamic events), the combat is just unintelligible spam.  With spell effect scaling, players will often find themselves subject to invisible attacks and random death.

Guild Wars 2 relies a lot on reflex and action-based combat.  This works great and lets players showcase their skills in small-scale combat, but again it does not work, AT ALL, in large scale confrontation.  There is literally so many area of affect abilities (and one shot death in PvE) being tossed that the dodge mechanic is completely rendered moot.  And the game was designed to bring clusters of players together in small areas to spam the shit out of these abilities.  It is very troubling to me that so much effort was put into this action combat to have it result in a complete button mashing affair when it should shine the most.  Combat is very difficult to follow because of this.

I want to reiterate that outside of combat, Guild Wars 2 has completely won me over.  The features are really that freaking good.  Advancement paths are varied and traditional MMO quests are all but gone.  Players are always encouraged to play together and never are they penalized for helping each other out (seriously, how the fuck has it taken this long to get an MMO where playing together is NOT a penalty!).  The non-combat heavy players will also find they can successfully thrive and reach max level simply through crafting and exploration.  If you can do it in Guild Wars 2, it probably advances the level track (even resource gathering gives experience!).

Another core area of weakness, which Arena Net keeps holding up, is all the voice acting in personal story quests and dungeons.  Instead of traditional MMO quest text boxes, Guild Wars 2 opts for quasi-cut scenes with voice acting (think Mass Effect 1 dialogue).  The problem is the character models are nearly 100% emotionless while the voice actor puts passion into the lines.  It is terrible.. honestly terrible... and I end up clicking skip the end just to red the blurb that will appear on the map (which again, the map is awesome).

Even with the core weaknesses in combat and the story telling, Guild Wars 2 is certainly a refreshing take in the MMO market.  I would highly recommend anyone who is interested in MMOs to check it out.  If anything, it is certainly one of the few games worth the $60 box price and there is no subscription so it is a game that players can continue to come back to at their leisure.  It also features level-up mechanics to bring lower level characters up to level 80 for the World vs World combat (albeit as a lower level character your stats are lower and options limited).

I expect a good healthy run in Guild Wars 2.  Once I reach level 80 down the line I will certainly be spending a good amount of time learning the WvW map, but at this point I think I am going to have to let the "mists" dissipate a bit as it is not fun currently.  Hopefully the WvW areas will change to encourage smaller group skirmishes (Arena Net should start by removing the invisible walls at the bottleneck leading out of the portal keep).

Guild Wars 2 Launches 8-28-2012

Silent on Guild Wars 2

A week doesn't seem to go by without someone buzzing me and asking why I'm so silent on Guild Wars 2.  Some have gone as far as to scream in my general direction that "IT IS EVERYTHING WARHAMMER ONLINE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE!!!".  To be honest, and to admit this for the first time publicly, I'm still a little butt hurt over Warhammer Online and it's epic shortcomings.  I've sworn off caring about big-name MMOs until I get my hands on them and the NDAs have dropped.  With that said, I do agree that GW2 is shaping up to be what Warhammer Online should have been, but with so much more going for it.

While I don't believe I ever blindly bought into the hype of Warhammer Online, I am certainly a victim of foolishly believing the game was more finished than it turned out to be.  I still maintain to this day that Warhammer Online put all the pieces together for a great MMO, but forgot to add the glue and nails that would keep it all together.  Band aids could only hold that sinking ship together for so long (surprisingly it's still not Free 2 Play).

Warhammer's failures put GW2's features into perspective.  Simple things such as allowing instant access to end-game PvP zones, PvE content in the PvP zones, and having PvP objectives outside of just killing other players would not mean as much (to me) had it not been for Warhammer Online's complete opposites.  Warhammer Online allows me to smile a little bit inside every time I watch or read a new bit of information about GW2.

Another small area of pleasure is looking at GW2's World vs World (WvW), most directly comparable to Realm vs Realm from Warhammer Online. Unlike Warhammer Online; GW2 took an interesting path to get to its WvW system.  Instead of distinct races/areas dividing the "teams", GW2 simply pits server against server. Each server has the exact same world, characters, and classes that the other servers have.  This instantly strikes a balance and the conflict comes down to numbers and grand strategy to decide the victors.  Throw in a bit of match making to re-balance equally skilled servers together and the forumla looks solid.

Matter of fact, GW2 looks solid as a whole (even in it's beta stage).  And this is why I am silent.  This is why I've stopped clawing to watch every new video or story that is released. I have yet to even pre-order the game. I want as much of GW2 to be fresh to me as possible.  Hopefully that will limit the butt hurt this time around on another promising MMO.

Prettty much nailed it, Guild Wars 2 Top 10

I pretty much agree with all the points in this video about Guild Wars 2. Hopefully the game can live up to at least five of them now.

Hey Tobold, Did You Forget About Star Wars Galaxies?

Tobold posted a couple weeks ago about the feeling that the crafting system in Guild Wars 2 was added onto what was an already fleshed out adventuring MMOG. This makes it seem like the crafting system is tacked on and was not present in any of the core design discussions for the game.

Tobold also asked:

I wonder how a MMORPG would look like if the developers *first* designed the crafting system, trade, and the player economy. And *then* designed the adventuring system around that.

I would answer this question very quickly: look at Star Wars: Galaxies (SWG).

For all intents and purposes, SWG was designed with the crafting and player economy in mind first and foremost and the adventuring gameplay added later. Combat was not even added to the alpha or beta phases of SWG until near the end and come release (and all the long years since), the adventure gameplay of SWG was terrible.

The funny thing is; SWG got the crafting and economy right! However, with the combat being so terrible and adventuring being nothing more than running across randomly generated terrain until the game spawned something for the player to interact with, SWG fell apart. Eventually the infamous NGE (aka New Game Experience) hit and SWG sits to this day as a pile of "what ifs". 

Tobold asks the right question, but may have overlooked one of the prime examples that the market has already churned out. With the SWG example in mind, what we need to really ask is: I wonder what a MMOG would look like if the developers designed the crafting system, trade, and the player economy AND the adventuring system at the same time AND with the same goals in mind.

IMHO, it would probably look like Minecraft with a story mode, but that is a completely separate discussion.