Pumping Irony

This morning wrapped up ArenaNet’s live demo presentation of Guild Wars 2 at Gamescom 2010. I did not go crazy bonkers following every possible link and morsel of text, but I did watch several of the live stream presentations. Thanks to @Longasc for providing a play-by-play English translation.

I love the character animations so far! I love the more active combat skills. I love the skill effects. I especially love that finally we see skill effects look pretty much the way they did in the CGI trailers – that must be an industry-first. The world looks glorious and very fitting with ArenaNet’s art style for the Guild Wars setting. They wanted to bring their concept art to life and it looks like they are well on their way to accomplishing it.

The combat mechanics look solid and the concept of a “downed” player should serve to provide a more “heroic” (for lack of a better term) feel to battles. Borderlands and a few other recent games (mostly shooters) have similar mechanics where when you run out of health you fall to the ground either unable to move or can crawl slowly but can still do a little bit of damage to contribute to the fight until you bleed out. Any player can revive any downed player they meet in the world; no grouping required and it’s not the same as resurrecting a corpse so we don’t need to equip a special skill to revive.

Another great feature is GW2 is doing away with the concept of “tagging” or “owning” mobs. This mechanic exists because of “kill stealing” in EverQuest where other players could do more DPS than you and get the mob’s aggro and full XP for the kill, creating a hostile environment among players. Developers came up with “tagging” mobs so people outside your group could not steal them. The downside is that tagging also has begat a somewhat hostile, or at least anti-social, environment where players get downright angry if you help them fight despite the fact that you don’t diminish their XP at all. GW2’s mobs are public in that anyone can join in the fight, can help each other out, but everyone gets full XP rather than the shared XP that most modern MMO’s use which is actually a disincentive to group while leveling.

I have always liked Guild Wars’ UI because it’s so minimalistic compared to traditional MMO’s where you end up with a screen full of hotbars and other UI elements. Guild Wars 2 added a “quest tracker” UI frame in the top right, though it seems like it will only work for whichever quest you set as primary rather than adding five or ten quests and taking up a good portion of screen real estate.

For a negative, I loathe the Diablo-esque “big red health ball” in the center of the screen. I’ve heard it is merely a placeholder but I cannot even fathom how the artists at ArenaNet thought that was a good idea. I’m all for innovating with the UI to keep you playing the game rather than playing the UI but that big red ball is so out of place it sticks out like a sore thumb. When your health goes down your screen gets “bloody” as seen in a number of shooters which gives you a big clue that you’re in trouble without forcing you to stare at your unit frame.

Also, progress bars have made an unfortunate return in Guild Wars 2. They may be “gashy-slashy stylized” like the rest of the UI but they’re still progress bars which frequent readers should know I dislike. Guild Wars had precious few progress bars, most skills with lengthier inductions had a full animation which built up to the skill’s release – a noted improvement over the traditional MMO that just cycles a brief animation loop while the progress bar ticks. From what we’ve seen in the demo Guild Wars 2 also has “build up” animations, making the progress bar redundant and in the way.

Finally, I was horrified to have my fears confirmed in the demo featuring the Charr Necromancer who opened his inventory and moused over all his gear. Sure enough, gear now has stats just like every other DikuMMO. That means Guild Wars 2 will be a game where yet again gear – and by association, level – matters. More gear treadmills. Entire areas of the game rendered obsolete by levels, just like we see in every other DikuMMO. In the previous post I wrote about levels in Guild Wars 2 and my fear that the broken Diku Monster would infect Guild Wars 2, a couple readers correctly commented that ArenaNet had not yet detailed what exactly a “level” means in Guild Wars 2 and perhaps the game would not use Diku-levels. However, ArenaNet’s developers appear to have confirmed the Diku-influenced levels in their own blog the past few days at Gamescom.

I was one of the designers responsible for events and spawns in The Brand, the mid-level charr section that players will experience at Gamescom.

Source

A demo player named Dutch Sunshine made a run from the newbie area at level two with a group of higher level ArenaNet staff and survived all the way into the level 15 area.

Toby played in The Brand, the mid-level charr area where demo players take on The Shatterer, a very big, very hostile dragon:

Source

That pretty much says it all. There are low-level starter areas progressing to specific areas for specific level brackets, which obsoletes all previous content, unlike Guild Wars 1.

I cannot find the words to express my disappointment but perhaps it’s for the betterment of their business model which relies on box sales and transactions rather than a subscription. The traditional Diku model, utterly broken as it may be for the massively multiplayer genre that has unfortunately adopted it, is what the majority of MMO players are familiar with. It’s easy to understand and easy (by comparison) to design and balance. They need box sales, and the simple Diku system sells.

I just finished reading a forum thread from players who played the demo at Gamescom and one perhaps said it best that we should not think of Guild Wars 2 as a true successor to Guild Wars, we should just think of it as an MMO.

Way back when Arena.net first started discussing Guild Wars 2, and being undecided how levels would be handled, I knew this would happen. For a brief moment, I had hope they would go with one of their early plans which involved a potentially cap-less leveling system; in essence what they have now in Guild Wars 1, only the number over your head changes as a visible means to show other players how much time you’ve put into the game, while the level itself wouldn’t matter in terms of gameplay because Guild Wars is not a game about levels the same way all our DikuMMO’s are. But I knew, in my heart of hearts, that Arena.net would not be able to resist the easy *ding!* progression of Diku – mostly thanks to World of Warcraft’s popularity, but I tend to put the blame squarely on EverQuest since it was the first truly successful MMORPG, and was almost literally a graphical DikuMUD.

Today’s Guild Wars 2 blog unveils the in-development leveling progression – which has a level cap of 80. Sound familiar? Gee, thanks, Blizzard…

On an extremely positive note, Arena.net is completely eliminating the XP curve that has always been prevalent in level-based games, since the original D&D. Instead, they’re taking an approach that is somewhat more akin to that seen in Mass Effect 2. In ME2, it takes exactly 1,000 XP to level; that number never changes. The GW2 blog doesn’t specifically say so but my instinct says GW2 will keep the “numbers get bigger as we level” for everything: health, damage, experience, etc. but they have the mathematics carefully calibrated so that if it took us two hours to level from 1 to 5 then it should take those same two hours to level from 70 to 73.

Dissecting the last few paragraphs of the blog entry we have:

…progression in Guild Wars 2 is way more than just leveling. We have achievements, trait collection, crafting, dungeons, skill collection, items, and much more.

Standard MMO fare everyone already expects; no surprise here.

Anyone can increase the length of an experience bar and call it content, but our world is filled with an almost endless stream of things to do.

Then why bother with that XP bar and levels when Guild Wars was about skills not levels?

And because our world is ever-changing and dynamic, you can play our content again and again!

Dynamic and repeatable content does not require levels but collecting and combining skills could make each repetition a little bit fresher of an experience, and that was ultimately the point of Guild Wars’ gameplay and progression. Not levels.

It’s been said that the act of leveling should only be enough to teach you about the class you play, and Guild Wars pretty much nailed that theory in both Factions and Nightfall where you start on a “noob island” and play through some of the backstory while you level to 20 (or very close to it) and the game gradually teaches you all the basics, then unleashes you into the actual game, playing through the actual campaign story which all takes place at level 20. I’ve always held the opinion that having those 20 levels at all was a mistake and if Guild Wars had simply started us off teaching us about skill collecting and putting together a good build, that would also have eliminated much of the confusion from the Diku crowd who only knew levels+gear=progression that didn’t work in Guild Wars.

Now that we know Guild Wars 2 will have those 80 levels, we also know the Diku simpletons will “get it” but will that be a good thing? Raph Koster writes that learning is fun, but if game after game after game has the exact same type of levels, what are players learning? They’re certainly not learning that levels are not the answer to everything.

NCSoft Account Services gets a nod of approval this time. Just got the email awhile ago that they returned my Guild Wars account to my PlayNC account (or whatever had happened) and reversed all activity that had taken place since the initial password change. In the middle of bad weather delays so I whipped out the M11x and logged into the game — all my characters and their belongings are intact!

The few of you who caught my brief Tweet-splosion yesterday already heard the sad news: my Guild Wars account has been hacked.

I haven’t logged into the game in about a week, and that was just to patch the game to the latest build and see who was on. I do not visit Guild Wars fan sites, fan forums or anything else nor have I used the PlayNC Store in well over a year or so.

How did I learn of this, then? I received an email from NCSoft Support yesterday morning informing me that my password reset was successful. Eh? I absolutely did not apply for a password reset. I quickly loaded the game and to my chagrin the password had indeed been changed!

I manually brought up NCSoft’s Support site – just in case the email was faked in a phishing attempt – and sure enough the password reset was also a support ticket. Damn it!

So today a GM has passed this along to Account Services to attempt a resolution. Assuming Arena.net keeps server logs, it should be easy to retrieve the password and reverse any actions taken in-game since the change. However it’s also NCSoft, and I have little to no faith in them for much of anything.

Here’s the thing: If I change my password on my bank’s website, or even something as simple as a forum site, I am always sent an email for verification prior to the reset taking place. Just in case, you know, someone applies for a reset using my account… Yet NCSoft, with a history of security problems, just goes ahead and changes the password then informs me of it? Gee, with security like that I can’t fathom why problems are so rampant…

I will keep saying this forever: I wish Arena.net would break from NCSoft; they – and we – deserve better.

Meant to post this screenshot a couple days ago but I had an unforeseen work situation.

Every year, Arena.net comes up with a little something new for its holiday celebrations and April Fool’s is no exception.

This year, in every town or outpost, all characters were shrunk to mini-pet size while all mini-pets were grown to full character size!

Last year or so when I was doing some part-time adventuring with Van Hemlock’s Tuesday Noob Club, I had also mentioned that I was gradually working through all the requirements for the Black Moa Chick mini-pet. I did finally get it last autumn but just in case I forgot to post a screenie at the time, here is gigantic proof:

I didn’t have time to snap all my favorite mini-pets, but I did run into Kaineng City where a lot of very rare mini-pets were running rampant. Good times.

Sorry, still no screenshots. Too busy installing and playing all these games to remember to take screenshots then upload them anywhere. I’ll do it next time! (That’s probably what I said last time, right?)

In the MMO Department, I’ve installed the obvious: LOTRO because I’m a Lifetime member and it’s “home” then Age of Conan because I kept my subscription active the past few months and *gasp* the game has come a long way since beta; it’s quite a blast now, and a shame more bloggers aren’t coming back to it.

I took Longasc’s advice and turned DX10 back on in LOTRO but disabled the dynamic shadows. Honestly, I can’t tell it from DX9 like that, but I’m sure there must be some differences somewhere that I’m missing.

Otherwise, despite being either on break or having a broken PC for the majority of last year, LOTRO was almost like I’d never left. I’m still busy grinding daily quests in Lothlorien for reputation so I can get into Caras Galadhon. I also never got to kindred with the Iron Miners so I’ll have to go back and work on that too so I can get the Friend of Nature combat pet. Then of course, I need the last few pieces of Radiance gear to complete the set then continue to the new set for Mirkwood which everyone is saying has crappy stats but the Radiance is required. So other than learning Skirmishes and grinding up my little Soldier — how the hell do I change classes or make it female? All I can do so far is trait him for Warrior (dps) or Protector (tank) — and the fact I’m getting XP again, it’s almost like nothing’s changed for me since I’m essentially still playing the early Moria game where I left off.

Age of Conan, as I mentioned, is a lot of fun! I’ve been plugging along quite nicely, just putting an hour or two per day in running quests. The XP is a bit over the top, though. My Bear Shaman reached level 28 and is already 80% to 29 just from turning in quests and only a few combat encounters. Maybe I’m just spoiled from having a mount in LOTRO but I’m really resenting being locked out of my mounts (I have two War Mammoths) until level 40. I’m assuming (hoping?) that the Bear Shaman will be a desired class for grouping and raiding, though. My primary goal in AoC is participating in end-game, so I want a class that I enjoy playing and is also in demand and can get groups easily. Really looking forward to the expansion!

Guild Wars is installed and up-to-date but I did not install using the -image switch so all I really have is the login screen. I’ll have to fully load each and every zone one by one once I decide to actually jump in and play the game, unless the -image switch also works after the fact?

I was planning on installing DDO but the little installer program doesn’t seem interested in running at all in Win7, even under compatibility settings. I’ll come back to that one, it’s rather low on the priority list, although I’m extremely curious to see how it’s changed since the business model shift.

In F2P Land, I installed that Allods Online game, and not sure I’ll be sticking with it. I do like that they totally ripped off Mythic’s font from Warhammer, though. That font was probably my favorite part of WAR’s UI. Otherwise, yeah, the art style in Allods is very WoW-ish so far. Due to that, framerate is excellent although the engine seems to falter a bit when it comes to loading in players.

I also installed Runes of Magic and spent a few hours today trying to remember how to play my character and how some of that game works. Despite being quite “standard” there’s something I rather like about Runes of Magic. I kinda wouldn’t mind having a regular F2P title as a secondary MMO; something that I like enough to be willing to support the developers by actually spending a little money here and there. It’s been well over a year since I last played, and my character is only level 11 now, but I never understood why Darren raised such a stink over the price of mounts. Compared to other F2P mount prices, RoM’s are right about in the middle; I’ve seen cheaper but I’ve also seen much more expensive in other games. I figure if he liked the game that much (and he seemed to until he saw the price of the mounts and then changed his opinion of the entire game) what’s $10 or whatever towards supporting a game you like that you never had to pay a dime for the box or a subscription? Darren has never struck me as an end-game kinda guy but the prices to play end-game at the same time he was complaining about the horse was the real crime. I think it was something like twice the cost of a full year in a subscription MMO in order to play RoM’s end-game. And he was complaining about a horse? That’s missing the forest for the trees, right there.

Finally, I saw Steam had Champions Online which is now setup as a permanent trial. So I logged into my Cryptic account and got a trial key and put a few minutes into it last night. Graphics are nice and I love the art style but the controls were a bit wonky and unresponsive. I was into comics and superheroes in high school, and I love the superhero movies of today, but I just don’t know that I’m into superhero games, MMO or otherwise. I bought City of Heroes at launch, and I think my character is perhaps level 9? Maybe slightly higher. I sub for a month every couple years, and CoH never manages to hold my interest the full month and after a few minutes in Champions I can tell it would probably be a similar story. But I’ll keep it installed since it’s a never-ending trial so I can pop in at my leisure.

In non-MMO territory, I started things off with my favorite PC shooter, Battlefield 2142. Installed it, patched it to 1.40 then installed the expansion then patched to 1.50. It runs fine but I keep getting PunkBuster errors and kicked off every server I’ve tried playing on. I have the manual PunkBuster updater but it’s not helping. So, no luck with shooters so far. It crossed my mind to pick up Bad Company 2 for PC but I only know two people who have it on PC. I run a Friends of Friends list on XBL that currently has 70 members of the 21+ adult gaming group I’m a member of so it’s not hard to do the math and figure out where I’d get the most bang for my buck. Bad Company 2 is arguably the best shooter I’ve ever played, but playing with the general public rather than squadding up with friends gives a much weaker experience and I’d most likely be stuck with the public if I got it on PC. Plus I get achievements on 360!

Speaking of that, Oakstout talked me into buying Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War 2 yesterday. I know the hardcore PC-only guys bitch about the whole Games for Windows LIVE thing but I love it! Not only can I chat (both text and voice) with my friends on XBL but I get achievements too! So far the game is pretty fun. It’s more of an RTT than an RTS, which is more my style, and the bosses are much more active and scripted, similar to a console game boss or an MMO raid boss, which makes for an interesting experience. Apparently DoW2 has a co-op mode too, so Oakstout is looking forward to getting me into a match. JayeDub saw me playing yesterday and said the same thing, and I think both Hudson and SmakenDahead have the game so maybe Oak can get a whole blogger or Casualties of War group for DoW2.

I also installed World in Conflict, another RTT. I bought it launch day because a buddy and I were interested then we ended up only able to play once. That was, what, two years ago? Turns out Oakstout and Aaron both have WiC too, and have expressed an interest in making some rounds there.

Finally, Aaron has spent the past year or so trying to convince me to get Battle for Middle Earth 2, so I bit the bullet and ordered that yesterday as well. He says it has an excellent co-op campaign and I’ve heard good things about the game overall, despite being 3 years old or whatever now.

So, now I’ll be back to bouncing back and forth between the PC and 360 again; between MMO’s and real games again. The challenge I face is whether I can flit from game to game as much as Stargrace or not! Watching her status on Raptr can be entertaining all on its own and makes me wonder if I’m not the only blogger out there with an extremely short attention span!

Before I sign off, non-gaming question: Rather than making backups of important files, settings, and media I bought a new hard drive for this PC. I have the other hard drive installed as secondary, and eventually after I’m satisfied I’ve pulled all the files I need off of it, I’m considering formatting that drive and making the entire drive into the My Documents partition. I could do that easily under XP but does Win7 support that type of thing? And would you recommend doing it or should I leave well enough alone?

I have come to the realization that Guild Wars is my World of Warcraft. I have no qualms about taking breaks, sometimes quite lengthy ones, but I never tire of coming back.

I recently decided to work on another character. I love all the stuff I can do with my monk Benjeth but I need a change of pace. I know I should be working up my assassin into a “PermaSin” for farming but I didn’t want to go there just yet. I have a whole repertoire of characters that mostly collect dust. Choices, choices.

The deciding factor on which character to dust off was (how’s this for out of left field) the death of Michael Jackson. Bear with me. When the Nightfall campaign released in autumn 2006 I immediately made each of the Nightfall classes, the Dervish and Paragon. With the Paragon, however, I made an interesting choice. Rather than going for the “hero dude” look, I intentionally made him appear strong yet effeminate. Michael Jackson (along with a few other celebrities) was an influence on my final choices on Korsin’s look, and the fact that male paragons do the Thriller dance was the clincher.

So I’ve had this paragon for almost three years, but I never quite knew what to do with him. He didn’t (still doesn’t) have many elite skills for me to work with. Other than the first set of max armor from Consulate Docks, he doesn’t have any great gear (yet) to synergize with a build. In short, other than being some sort of support class, I didn’t fully “get” the paragons. The closest I’d come was when I first logged him in a few weeks ago and put together a build to add a minor buff to the group’s damage output and help the group restore health and energy with his elite skill able to remove all conditions from the entire group. It wasn’t exciting, it arguably wasn’t even necessary, but at least I “got” that build. Fine, but I wanted the next step, something fun, something exciting, and something useful.

Enter the Imbagon. This build gets it’s name from being able to create an “imbalance” by drastically reducing damage the group is taking, boosting the group’s damage, and doing very nice damage himself. For a support class, this is the Total Package. It’s the reason that for at least a year or two the Imbagon is the most popular paragon build.

Benjeth, who I’ve been playing as my main character for four years and who is not lacking for resources. When I learned to 600 last month, I walked up to the armor crafter with the fee and materials and five clicks later Benjeth had a new armor set. I walked over to the rune trader NPC and a few clicks later Benjeth had all the runes and insignias necessary to turn the new armor into 600 armor. Other than account-wide bank funds and crafting materials, Korsin doesn’t have that advantage since he has spent most of his life mothballed.

Here’s the Imbagon build Korsin is currently using: OQGjUymG6SPYWYxgAh5iXFpbubA

Like all the greatest builds, the Imbagon is a multi-campaign build. It’s based on the common match of Paragon/Warrior classes, which works well since both classes have adrenaline-based skills. Nightfall (obviously), Factions, and Eye of the North are required to get all the skills.

For attributes we have: (+1 means a minor rune for that attribute is affixed to a piece of armor; headpieces can have their own inherent +1 plus a rune)

Spear Mastery: 14 (12+1+1)
Command: 7 (6+1)
Leadership: 12 (11+1)

Additionally the Imbagon ideally has a Rune of Clarity to reduce blind and weakness effects, a Rune of Superior Vigor to give +50 health, and either Centurions or Survivor insignias on all armor pieces. Centurion insignias give +10 armor each but only while affected by a paragon’s chant, echo or shout. Survivor insignias give various amount of +health depending which amor piece it’s attached to; a total of +40 health if all 5 are used. Korsin currently has one Centurion insignia and four Survivor. Being a bit of a pauper due to his noobishness (and my hard rule that each character in any game must earn his keep) Korsin does not yet have the Rune of Superior Vigor because it’s usually (always?) the most expensive rune in the game and he cannot afford it just yet, but that’s ok for now because I’m working in Normal Mode right now until Korsin gets additional reputation to make the build more effective, and because in general the AI mobs don’t target paragons as much so he’s not taking much damage at all so far. In fact, I’m debating if simply using all five Centurion insignias wouldn’t be more effective as well as less expensive, but I’ll wait until I experience Hard Mode to make that decision.

How it works. The power of the Imbagon build lies in its simplistic beauty. This is yet another example of creativity, putting together a build that is super-effective and super-synergistic. The focal point of the build is the Factions skill “Save Yourself!” which gives +100 armor to the other members of the group (but not to the one who uses the skill). Save Yourself! is also an adrenaline-based skill, so we have three additional skills to assist with adrenaline management. First the elite skill, Focused Anger which for 45 seconds gives a bonus (+120% at Korsin’s 12 Leadership). Focused Anger has a 60-second refresh, however, so we add the Warrior skill “For Great Justice!” which gives +100% adrenaline for 20 seconds, which we activate just before Focused Anger wears off. Then we have Aggressive Refrain which is an Increased Attack Speed (IAS) skill. 12 Leadership gives 21 seconds of +25% IAS. The faster we attack, the faster we build adrenaline. Combine that with Focused Anger or For Great Justice! and we’re an adrenaline generating machine. For additional damage reduction, we have “There’s Nothing to Fear!” which is a brief buff that reduces all incoming damage and then provides a minor heal when it expires. Aggressive Refrain gives a penalty of 20 seconds of “cracked armor” (-20 armor) but as I mentioned (at least in Normal Mode) the AI doesn’t target paragons much. Additionally, Aggressive Refrain is an echo and Save Yourself!, For Great Justice! and There’s Nothing to Fear! are shouts which trigger the +10 armor for each Centurion insignia should I decide to go that route.

Those skills drastically reduce incoming damage, now we add the Ebon Battle Standard of Honor skill from the Ebon Vanguard reputation. At maximum reputation it will provide a 20 second buff where each group member gets +15 damage, and if fighting Charr an additional +10.

The final consideration to great builds is energy management. Currently Korsin has 30 energy. Aggressive Refrain alone costs 25 to cast. That’s where the Leadership attribute comes in. For each 2 points in Leadership, I gain 1 energy for each ally affected by a chant or shout. Every time Korsin uses one of those shouts, that’s +6 energy. Plus there’s the natural energy regeneration. Optimally, Korsin should have a zealous spear as well, but I haven’t found one yet. Zealous would give -5 energy and a -1 to energy regeneration penalties, but provides +1 energy for each hit on an enemy. An Imbagon is constantly attacking, even if it’s merely an auto-attack, and a lot of that is under an IAS effect as well, so a zealous spear should be a big help for energy management when combined with the shouts.

Korsin is currently dealing with a rank of 4 in Ebon Vanguard and rank 1 in Kurzick. Thankfully, the Factions reputations (Luxon and Kurzick) are account-wide rather than character-specific (how I wish LOTRO and other games did that…) so I can use Benjeth and other characters who are far enough into the Factions campaign to help earn Kurzick reputation, which is a priority since rank 1 only provides 4 seconds of Save Yourself! which only helps during a spike, whereas the intent of the Imbagon is to keep up Save Yourself! as long as possible.

Builds like this, and some of my favorite monk builds for Benjeth, illustrate part of what is so great about Guild Wars. The freedom to be creative and take the hundreds of available skills and choose eight skills that not only synergize (which is extremely important) but also combine to quite a drastic effect, in this case a hefty damage reduction buff combined with a damage output buff. Most of the DikuMMORPGs out there use the skill tree system where you can create your character and before you earn a single XP you’re able to look at the skill trees and draw a progression roadmap. The potential for creativity and freedom is mostly lost when you’re limited to 1-3 skill trees to pick and choose from, leaving most characters of any given class clones of each other at level cap. There’s not even any excitement at leveling and wondering what new skills you might get anymore; it’s all there on the skill tree map. Just another aspect of cutting out any sense of adventure in favor of instant gratification…

Sooooo very tempted to do a much-overused and abused “300″ ripoff by shouting “This is Guild Wars!” but I won’t. Or did I just?

I’ve been enjoying this year’s stint in Guild Wars immensely. I’ve been pretty social with the alliance, which has grown and shifted a few guilds in the past couple of weeks. I even did an Underworld run with one of the guilds and we had an awesome time and I managed to keep everyone alive. That is until I single-handedly wiped the entire group by picking up a quest that I shouldn’t have. Luckily, they took it in stride even though we were all disappointed (we were near the end of the run) and no one said any rude comments over Ventrilo or chat. Quite the contrary, in fact. That was the only noob move I made, and only because the Ventrilo server did one of its momentary stutters and I’d thought the leader said for “everyone make sure to grab that quest.” Turns out he said “make sure no one grabs that quest!” Oh well.

As I mentioned a few posts ago, one of my projects for Guild Wars is to finally come to grips with full-on Protection monking. My old build was a Word of Healing healing/protection hybrid but it seems that for both PvP and Hard Mode PvE that full Protection is more valuable than the reactionary. I’ve come up with a few decent Protection builds that I’m becoming fairly proficient at where I have to alternate between proactively “pre-protting” either a single character (usually a tank if one is in the group) or the entire group prior to a damage spike — if I see (or think that I see) one coming — or reactive condition removal. Fun but challenging and it requires a somewhat different mindset when compared to the traditional reactive-only healing mentality we see in every other MMO. To maximize the efficiency of my Protection builds I wanted to get a “perfect” Protection staff. Last weekend was double drop rate for green (unique) items but I sure couldn’t tell. I spent roughly ten hours on and off in Grothmar Wardowns to get Chaelse’s Staff. I’ve never spent that amount of time getting a green item during normal drop rates! Louden Swain (@GuildWarsLouden) waltzed over and got the staff for me after only a few tries. Figures. Anyway, thanks for the staff Louden, it’s already been getting plenty of use! (Screenshot is during my final attempt to get the staff.)

This weekend, aside from running some special quests and missions in the Shing Jea Monastery for the Dragon Festival 2009, I decided to finally learn a new solo farming tactic. Just over a year ago, I learned how to do the 55 Monk thing, which I’ve become decent at but still completely unable to deal with mobs casting health degenerations on me. When I only have 55 health to begin with, hexes or curses that nail me at several pips of degen means I’m dead with barely any time to react.

These days, a 600/Smite team is the cool Monk farming. It is a duo team, so it’s not exactly “solo” farming, but the Smiter monk can be a Hero rather than a player. I went to Kamadan and bought the lowest level Sunspear armor I could get — Armor Level 15 — to ensure I’m being hit as often as possible, then went about maximizing the health bonuses by buying a Survivor insignia for each armor piece, two Runes of Vitae and finally the big mamma jamma: a Superior Rune of Vigor which cost 18,000 gold. Equipping that armor set puts Benjeth’s health in the vicinity of 600, give or take, hence the name. The Smiter monk is mainly just to follow around out of sight and maintain four enchantments on the 600 monk, so I setup one of my monk Heroes for the job.

Running the 600 was more challenging and difficult than learning to 55 for me, and took several revisions of the build until I finally came up with one that first and foremost actually made logical sense to me, then arranged so that I could run it easily and quickly because 600ing can be a little high maintenance and busy once the combat starts. So far my proficiency has allowed me to enter several areas in Hard Mode with no problems. Until I got cocky and went into the City of Torc’qua in Nightfall’s Domain of Anguish. I don’t think I’d ever actually been in there before but I am badly wanting to get a Tormented Shield for Benjeth and the Margonite Gemstones needed only drop in City of Torc’qua or The Foundry of Failed Creations.

Each time I stepped into the first wave of Margonites I was immediately spammed with Strip Enchantment, which is lethal to a 600 monk since the entire near-invulnerability relies on 6 to 7 enchantments being maintained continuously. The second my Spell Breaker expired, all Benjeth’s enchantments were stripped and he was pummeled and degened in less than one second!

Surely, there has to be a way to deal with these things? Domain of Anguish groups are harder and harder to come by these days, and I very badly want that shield. It’s sexy! I was hoping the 600/Smite team would do the trick…

Working! But aside from that, I am once again on break from LOTRO. I was fine and dandy when I returned in April with my focus on PvMP but of course I had to go check on my Lore-master. I did some of the Moria instances with my kinship and got one more Radiance piece. Then, against my better judgment I dusted off my Captain and took him to Angmar where I worked to get him the full heavy Fem armour set. Sure enough I felt the sizzle, which was quickly followed by the fizzle, of burnout again.

It’s not specifically that I’m burned out on LOTRO, however, I think I’m just burned out on DikuMMORPGs as a whole. I thankfully have that Lifetime membership to LOTRO which has always allowed me to guiltlessly come and go as I please. But I am finding it impossible to get interested — much less excited — about any upcoming DikuMMORPG at all.  Aion? Pfft! Please. World of Animecraft with a zone for flying but invisible walls everywhere else? Straight up DikuMMO with all the same old Diku features as every other DikuMMO the past decade? No thanks. To paraphrase Bartle, “I’ve already played Aion, it was called Every Other Frickin’ DikuMMO Ever.” BioWare is working on WoW: The Old Republic which at this point in time isn’t doing anything for me, though I won’t eliminate the possibility that BioWare may actually surprise me and put out a quality game that is fun and different, but honestly I’m just expecting the same old Diku stuff but with the best animated and synchronized Diku combat ever seen. The only MMOGs out there I have even a slight interest in are decidedly non-Diku. I think I can safely say I am Done with Diku. LOTRO will still be my main traditional (and therefore Diku-derived) MMORPG, and I will still tour some now and then that I already own like Age of Conan and Vanguard. I don’t have any faith that Mythic has the ability to suddenly turn Warhammer into a fun and compelling game to get me back there even for a brief visit, but stranger things have happened. But right now I just don’t see myself jumping on the bandwagon of any more Shiny New Sameness from here on out.

So I’m back to the 360 primarily. I still have Fallout 3 to work on. A friend was replaying Mass Effect so I popped that in and started a new campaign with my existing character, and got him to level 50! Plus my usual suspects of shooters, an RTS (Halo Wars) and an RTT (EndWar) to work on, I’m pretty happy.

I also picked up Too Human on the cheap. It received less than favorable reviews, and the demo wasn’t exactly spectacular but I have to say the full game has been extremely fun! I finished the campaign in a few days (it’s short, but I also played a lot) at level 29, then promptly restarted it. I’m pumped up to get level cap and work on the elite armor set and get the elite plasma rifle for my Commando. I will say that for me, the Commando class pretty much solves the iffy attempt at 360-degree control that causes so much confusion with the melee classes. The Commando pretty much sucks at melee and I only do it to knock an enemy in the air to juggle them with my rifle to crank up my combo meter. It’s a ranged ballistics class and is much, much easier to aim just fine and shoot things. Now I know what Pete meant the other day when he complained about Too Human though. It was designed from the start as a trilogy, and just when the story gets really cool, game over. Literally. A story cinema was playing and just as I said “oh, cool!” it all faded out and the credits rolled. Queue up a Darth Vader “nooooooooo!” yell and you get the picture. I’ve got a few AGE guys who’d like to co-op too, so I’m really looking forward to that.

On the PC, I’ve been playing Guild Wars again after close-ish to a year off from actually playing. The new Zaishen Bounty quests have been a blast and I’ve gotten over my fear of PUGs (well, somewhat) and just jump in with my Monk. Everyone runs them on Hard Mode which I have very little experience with, and it’s been a real eye-opener. I normally run Benjeth with the Healer’s Boon build, with a slight personal tweak, but Hard Mode has made me realize that I need to stop merely occasionally dipping my toes in the Protection line and just jump in and learn it. It seems that in Hard Mode — and PvP! — it’s more efficient and important to prevent the health bars from going down than it is to bring them back up. So there’s my project: Learn Protection and PvP. It seems every time I manage to make it for one of Van Hemlock‘s Tuesday Noob Club sessions, it’s PvP week and, as I discovered yesterday, he’s come to expect me to sigh in disappointment and vanish once I learn it’s PvP week. No more! I’ll give it a shot again, although I reserve the right to use the Shock Warrior I made just for the occasion in addition to monking with Benjeth!

In the interest of PvE emergencies and learning PvP someday, I started working on getting Benjeth a shield and spear. His current spear is a normal blue with a +19% enchant bonus, so I’ll still need to get a perfect one, but I did get a unique (green item) shield for him: Keht’s Aegis!

I have some more items that I want to get for Benjeth, but he’ll need to start going into Domain of Anguish, Fissure of Woe and the Underworld for them, which are some of the game’s most popular elite areas. Heroes and Henchmen cannot enter elite areas so I’ll have to learn who’s who in my new alliance to get into some groups.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water…

Most of us are anxiously awaiting news of Guild Wars 2, which has been pushed back to sometime this millennium. But wait! Arena.net still has a small team dedicated to Guild Wars and they slowly push out new goodies. This latest update was a huge deal for the game’s 4th anniversary. Take a look!

Storage upgrades are awesome! Don’t forget to get your free storage pane before May 31st! In addition to four new storage panes available for $9.99 each from either the in-game store or the NCsoft store, they’ve added another bag slot to our characters. The new bag is called an “equipment pack.” The smallest one is a 5 slot bag and costs either 2.5 platinum or 100 gold and 1 Gold Zaishen coin. Characters can run Zaishen Challenge missions to collect coins for bigger equipment packs. The Large Equipment Pack is 20 slots and costs 100 gold and 15 Gold Zaishen coins.

The Hall of Monuments has been upgraded to be able to display achievements from both individual characters and account-wide!

A new zone called the Zaishen Menagerie has been added near the Battle Isles where players can store all their charmed animals! I never leveled my ranger, so I could be way off-base here, but I think the way it works is that rangers can charm, then level, an animal but if they charm a new animal they lose the first one permanently. This Zaishen Menagerie lets you drop off any charmed animal and they can roam around freely and if you want to switch to a different animal, now you can do it! The only real downside is that, unlike the Hall of Monuments where you can bring in other players to view your achievements, only your character and charmed animal can enter the Menagerie.

The Menagerie itself is a good-sized area with varied terrain, ranging from forests to beaches and even a volcanic tunnel. There are Master of Winds NPCs liberally placed who will cast Windborne Speed on you, giving a brief 33% increase to run speed.

Other services include a $9.99 purchasable pet unlock pack which unlocks all common pets. Prestige pets still must be earned legitimately! There are also some trainer NPCs which will unlock individual pets or pet evolution tiers in exchange for either Balthazar faction or gold and Zaishen coins.

Nicholas the Traveler, long thought lost in the Searing, has resurfaced! He’ll be traveling to random cities in each campaign setting, providing new content for those who manage to find him! This is a great way to provide “new content” simply by re-using the existing content for new rewards.

Finally, more transaction-based upgrades for the in-game and NCsoft store, such as character renaming and style changes. The character rename is a simple $14.99 transaction and it’s done. The style thing is a major change, though. This lets us mix and match styles from each campaign into a single character! Purchase Makeover Credits from the store, then visit the Stylist NPC to finalize the new style for your character. Two types are available: a normal Makeover Credit will let you change the appearance of one character, and the Extreme Makeover Credit will let you change the gender as well! Each is priced the same at $9.99.