Pumping Irony

Arena.net updated their Guild Wars 2 FAQ a few days ago. One particular item was of interest — and concern — to me:

How will character progression work? Will you be raising the level cap

Guild Wars 2 will have the kind of extensive character advancement appropriate to a persistent world RPG. It is our priority to avoid forcing players into the grind-based gameplay that too often accompanies a high level cap.

Also, to allow players the freedom to play together even if their friends are at a much higher (or lower) level, we are planning to implement a strong sidekicking system, similar to that used in City of Heroes.

We’re applying this same philosophy to competitive play. Players will be able to engage in organized, balanced PvP (similar to GvG in the original Guild Wars) without needing to first level up characters, find equipment, or unlock skills. While inside the organized PvP area, all characters will be the same power level and will have access to the same equipment.

/sigh

I’ve always felt one of the sources of confusion many players had in their attempts to adapt to Guild Wars was having levels at all. It’s a skills-based game, and the majority of the game takes place at level cap. The leveling phase is fairly quick and serves only to introduce you to the basic concepts of the game, nothing more. If you come into Guild Wars with the levels-and-gear-based mentality that most MMO’s have, you’re doing it “wrong” and will only walk away in disappointment.

When Arena.net originally announced Guild Wars 2 would be raising the level cap, or possibly have no level cap at all, I was immediately concerned. This takes away from everything Guild Wars stands for and lowers it to the sewer standards of a typical MMO. Having no level cap raised questions of balancing with mobs and other characters, then I thought of Asheron’s Call. AC is also a skills-based game, but it does have levels. However, your level is not an indication of your power like it would be in other MMO’s, but merely an indication of the total xp you’ve accrued on that character. Vanity abounds in Guild Wars, from elite armors, to green weapons, to title tracks, to mini-pets, and even Collector’s Edition emotes. Guild Wars also keeps track of your total xp (since you still “ding” repeatedly after reaching “level cap”) but it’s only available to you, no one else can see it. Within that context, a limitless level cap would actually make sense in the Guild Wars universe.

However, with this recent FAQ update, and the mere mention of a CoX-like sidekick system, I am very concerned that in GW2 levels, and all their associated problems, will suddenly matter. I think part of me just died inside…

Ok, I spent entirely too much time in June working up my monk’s Norn reputation mostly for the Ursan Blessing skill to cheat power my way through the Norn Fighting Tournament. Currently at Rank 8, which is probably enough, I thought I’d give it one last shot “for real” before turning in despair to Ursan. Someone suggested I modify one of my 55 builds to cut down on the enchantments since I’m only fighting one opponent at a time (well, usually) and use a few other skills to let my opponents kill themselves. My primary weapon of choice would be Spoil Victor, followed by Necrosis and Reversal of Damage. The remaining skills were more or less typical of a 55 Monk designed to minimize damage and keep a positive health regeneration.

In one time through the tournament with the new 55 build, I not only went every round to win the tournament and gain the Bison Cup item, I also gained Zehtuka’s Horn and unlocked the final Hero, Kahmu!

Such a weight off my shoulder, finally getting the last Hero in the game, not to mention two new items some of my Heroes can possibly put to good use and the satisfaction of winning the Tournament with a legitimate build rather than resorting to the cheesy, über-powerful Ursan Blessing.

However, one final task remains: I did not fight Zho to win her Journal, which is one of the steps required to eventually gain the much sought-after Black Moa Chick…

I’ve been on medical leave all month, so I’m bored and ready to return to the *cough* “friendly skies” *cough* though I fully realize that as soon as I’m pronounced fit to return and I set foot in my domicile again I will immediately say something to the effect of “oh my gawd is this over with yet so I can go home?” The grass is always greener, indeed.

In spite of having the entire month off, I really didn’t delve into very many MMO’s. In fact, I spent the majority of game time in Guild Wars, which is not an MMO at all. I spent a lot of time adventuring and farming (boo hiss!) with my monk.

Guild Wars: Early in the month I happened to see Darren in-game and he was in dire need of assistance completing a quest and a mission. I didn’t realize his character was (still is?) still on Istan, which is the “noob island” of the Nightfall campaign. His dervish is level 18 and Darren gave me the impression he’s one of the millions of people who just don’t “get” Guild Wars design. It has levels but it’s not about levels like most MMO’s are so he was curious (and perhaps concerned?) about what was next. I gave a short explanation that hopefully at least got him pointed down the right mindset. Turns out his quest was a Master difficulty quest so even though I’m level cap and had a decent healing and protection hybrid build loaded, as well as good builds on my heroes, we had a rough time of it. Or perhaps I should just say I had a rough time of it since I was the healer. I think he actually made me perspire trying to keep them alive. SOE unleashed their Living Legacy promotion so Darren is in EQ2 now for the duration, enjoying that game’s chapter of Karen’s Revelry and Honor guild!

My next celebrity run-in was the Stormbringer himself: Van Hemlock! I was given an honorary induction into his little Tuesday N00b Club guild, meaning I received a guest invitation that allows me to travel to their Guild Hall for 8 hours. Since I had the month off I ended up making a point of meeting the TNC each week for adventure, fun and hilarity. Last week was our first foray into PvP. We started off doing the Zaishen challenge, which is “practice PvP” against a team of NPC’s. Van Hemlock set up the NPC teams to be single professions. I forget what the first team was, but we mowed them down and got a bit cocky about it. The second team was all rangers loaded with a trapper build. They cut through us like soft, warm butter. Repeatedly. Finally, our heads hung in shame, we proceeded to try PvP against, you know, other players. Rather than the dangerous and competitive world of the arenas we went to Cantha for some Alliance Battles. The TNC is a Luxon guild, while I’m in a Kurzick alliance but I’m fairly certain I can build up Luxon faction without harming my Kurzick standing. We did two battles. The first one, we (Luxons) won (yay! oh wait…) making a dramatic comeback at the end to score the final points. Kurzicks did the same on the second battle. Luxons started off strong and maintained a very healthy lead until the very end when the Kurzicks made an incredible comeback to win. Probably the most fun all month with the TNC was running the Catacombs of Kathandrax dungeon, which received brief mention on the most recent episode of the Van Hemlock podcast. One of the TNC guys was commenting how it was so different running with a real healer. Apparently they’ve grown quite accustomed to having high death penalties in their adventures. Just getting to the dungeon itself is a bit of a challenge, but we pulled it off with only a few casualties. We proceeded through the first two levels of the dungeon in relative caution with only one character dying (twice, sorry mate) then we entered the third level and challenged the boss, Ilsundur, Lord of Fire. I’d never been in this dungeon before so I didn’t know what to expect. Just this one boss in his chamber, easy pickings right? Right… If his massive AoE attacks weren’t enough to immediately put me on a feverish healing defensive while the flame-licked group scattered about, in my concentration on the health bars I just barely caught notice of “something else” in the periphery of the screen. I then heard a rumbling sound slowly growing louder. Just as I started to ask “Hey, what’s that sou…” *KABOOM* I became a crispy, flaming pancake, run over from behind by a gigantic rolling fireball! Ilsundur sets two of these monstrosities rolling, each in opposite directions around the chamber so not only are we fighting him but we have to watch out for the approach of these fireballs, both in front and behind us. Luckily “death by flaming steamroller” is on the rather short list of occurrences which do not contribute to death penalty so despite at least five full wipes, the only death penalty anyone incurred was due to legitimate combat deaths.

Oh, just to explain the “Stormbringer” thing, Van Hemlock seems to be cursed. Every single Tuesday, shortly after logging in and grouping up with him, storms appear. Two weeks ago they became so violent the power was knocked out in this section of town for nearly an hour. Last week, I had just come in from a several mile walk. Perfect day, not a cloud in the sky, not extremely humid or anything. Van Hemlock logs into GW and within 15 minutes I’m hearing thunder! Ten minutes later a full-on storm is roiling.

It also turns out that despite having completed the Nightfall campaign late last year, I did so in a manner that completely skipped at least three entire zones and two towns! Possibly more, but those were the latest discoveries. I skipped them so entirely that my map didn’t even show the zone portals, so I had no idea anything should have been there until just by chance I compared my map to a fully explored map of Elona. I don’t have the zones fully explored yet but they are on my map and I’ve reached both towns so I can map travel to them now. Farming? Initially I was farming Norn reputation from the Eye of the North expansion to build up my Norn skills, most notably Ursan Blessing which gives extreme bonuses to armor and strength. Yeah, my character is a monk so he’ll have less armor even in Ursan than a warrior would, but I’ve been unsuccessful with every other tactic to get through that Norn Fighting Tournament to unlock the final hero, Kahmu (and a few other items) so in desperation I’m looking to Ursan to power my way through it. Rank 8 so far, and not looking forward to repeating this on my warrior someday. I’m also wanting to get my Lightbringer reputation to maximum rank because of the Lightbringer AoE healing spell I’ve recently been introduced to and fallen in love with, but that particular reputation is very slow to increase so I’m definitely not looking forward to repeating it on any other character.

Finally, this month I finally got to see both the Underworld and Fissure of Woe, two of the most famous elite areas in the game! I’ve only been in one time to each, but I’m definitely looking forward to more and being able to learn my way around and which mobs drop the most sought-after items! The alliance I’m in has a daily schedule so I should be able to get involved with more and more high-end content as I get to know everyone better. If I can get into a Domain of Anguish group, that should be of great help with my Lightbringer reputation as well.

DDO: I didn’t get nearly as much DDO time as I’d hoped, mostly because of Guild Wars. I did manage to sneak around solo into the new Three-Barrel Cove wilderness area, but the second any mob noticed me I had to run for my life back to the inn. Wizards being super-squishy and all… I did do a few quests I’d never seen before, and in interesting groups. Oh, for the record, the new Monk class is awesome! I don’t have one to actually play myself, but just from what I saw being grouped with some, it looks like a blast. The only real gripe about them I’ve heard is from clerics, especially those from guilds who take things slower or perma-death guilds in particular. Monks need to keep going in order to maintain their ki so they tend to run ahead of the group and start fights to keep their ki up while everyone else sighs. I’m sure players will find a synergy soon though. In any event, my wizard did finally go adventuring once more, though someone needs to give me a lesson on DDO inventory management. Do I actually need all these robes, scepters, staves and wands? They each seem to have very unique properties so I’ve been reluctant to sell them but I’m nearly out of bag space now.

Hellgate: London: I put a little bit of time into HGL this month. Mostly in hopes of catching up with Hudson and Bildo in-game but that didn’t happen. It’s a shame the game was marketed as an MMO, for it definitely isn’t. In fact, Flagship seems to excel at marketing single-player games as MMO’s. Both HGL and Mythos seem to be solo-oriented with almost zero need to group with anyone other than “just for the hell of it.” I haven’t gotten far in either yet, so maybe that changes, but it seems silly for now. I thought HGL did a great job of nailing the shooter “feel” within an RPG context, far better than Tabula Rasa did. Although I’ll partially attribute that to HGL’s first-person view. Both HGL and TR do a horrid job in third-person. Why do console developers do such a great job with third-person shooters and the PC guys can’t pull it off to save their lives? Anyway, my only real gripe about the shooter aspect of HGL is the unlimited ammo. Sure, in LOTRO I love that my hunter doesn’t have to waste bag space stocking up arrows like I did in WoW (and risk running out in the middle of a raid), but HGL having unlimited ammo really trivializes the combat. All I have to do is hold down the fire button and move the reticule over the mobs until they die with no worries whatsoever about strategy or keeping track of my ammo. It did seem like they’ve squashed a lot of bugs in the months since I last played, and the performance is awesome now, but I still notice that it takes a very long time after quitting the game before resources are released. Memory leak? My Guild Wars alliance also has an HGL chapter, so perhaps I’ll try catching up with some of them and see how the grouping is. Speaking of Mythos, I guess a huge new makeover is coming to the test server. It’s already received the Overland treatment, where the whole game is open rather than being instanced. I haven’t been able to play in a very long time because there was a bug in the game that interfered with the Zune wireless networking services, causing Mythos to not react to any input (ie. I could login but not move). Sure, I could disable those two services and reboot (and I did once) but the Diablo click-fest game play just doesn’t interest me enough for it. Regardless, the latest update to Mythos’ test server fixed that bug so maybe, maybe, I’ll put some time in if I’m extremely bored and in a masochistic mood. I hear a future update will give an “MMO view” so maybe that will make it a more enjoyable experience. Then again, I absolutely cannot stand Dungeon Runners, so maybe not…

F2P: Nothing says “I’m bored!” more than going F2P. That also says a lot about EQ2 that I’d rather play any number of F2P games than login to EQ2, which I did re-install for the Living Legacy thing, and thus far haven’t managed to stay interested in playing for more than 5 minutes total this month. For no good reason in particular I always keep several F2P games installed but I never actually play any, at least not for any length of time. One thing I’ve noticed is that an awful lot of the F2P games seem to be all about soloing. You can create a warrior, mage, hunter, or priest-type character but that seems to make little real difference and only appeals to how you personally like to see your character kill things. I rarely see any incentive to group, unless the high level PvP/PK is better or safer in groups. Archlord has “auto looting” when you’re grouped, so you don’t have to waste time actually picking your loot up off the ground; it goes straight into your inventory. Other than laziness, I’ve seen no benefit to grouping there. The exception so far has been Rappelz. My initial impression is that it actually has a fairly helpful in-game community and I constantly see groups looking for more players, usually a cleric but often seeking a “damage dealer” (DD) class (which we’d call a “dps” class in other games). The classes in Rappelz do matter and they fit their roles more like a “real” (ie. Western AAA subscription) MMO “holy trinity.” There are several dungeons in the game, so you’ll see LFG’s for dungeon parties (DP) all the time. From the very little I can tell, dungeons are where the Cash Shop comes in: players buy the Stamina Savers to help keep them alive and earn extra XP and JP (Job Points for skills) while in the dungeons. Otherwise, the cash shop is aesthetic fluff items, for the most part, and not needed. In fact, in the little time I’ve put in I have received two or three stamina savers either as drops or quest rewards, so it’s entirely possible that the CS wouldn’t be needed at all? In addition to dungeon parties, which anyone of a certain level or rank can join, Rappelz has guild-only dungeon sieges which is a combination of PvE and PvP to own that dungeon, which gives some benefit to the guild. If my guild owned a certain dungeon, another guild can challenge my guild by first applying to raid the dungeon. If they kill the bosses before the timer expires they proceed to the actual siege, where both guilds fight for ownership of the dungeon.

I do notice that yes, F2P games have shallow game play (or at least don’t go to lengths to disguise the grind like our AAA ones do) but they do push the envelope in other areas. Rappelz seems to have a rather complicated pet system. Mabinogi allows your character to age, which I don’t think has been done in an MMO before. If the rumors of a Harry Potter MMO are true, I feel this would be a great aspect of game play where as students of Hogwarts, not only do we “level up” but each year of school our characters actually age and grow, just like the characters in the novels and movies do. If I understand correctly, Archlord seems to have some system set up where after a grueling set of dungeons or keep assaults, one player can become the archlord of that server, and receives super archlord armor and weaponry and a dragon mount, complete with AoE fire breath. Of course, he immediately becomes a target for whomever is waiting in the shadows with aspirations of becoming archlord himself. Who knows, I may actually put in more F2P time with the goal of exploring their specific features where they’re innovating into areas we haven’t really seen in our AAA subscription games.

Returning to the Eye of the North story arc, Benjeth successfully completed the Destruction’s Depths dungeon. Now it was time for the final battle! With the Disc of Chaos and its legion of destroyers defeated, the Asurans were able to reclaim their Central Transfer Chamber. It is learned that the destroyers operate as a collective so while the Deldrimor dwarves fend off the destroyer armies, Benjeth will lead a strike team to eliminate the Great Destroyer himself!

High Priest Alkar guards the Asuran gate that leads to the chamber of the Great Destroyer. First, some reconnaissance. We gated into the hot, magma-filled chamber and sneaked near enough to see what we’d be up against to create a battle plan. The Great Destroyer is level 31! Right away that implies plenty of armor and health, so I’ll need to come up with a way to lower his maximum health. Several destroyer guards in the chamber as well, though hopefully placed so that we can take them one at a time. The chamber itself is a lava pit with only a few areas of encrusted magma to stand on, so we’ll likely be dealing with burning environmental damage. If I’m correct and burning is a continuous damage effect, individual condition removal skills would deplete the monks’ energy too quickly and leave none for healing. So I decided to rely on party heals instead and attempt to out-heal all the damage we’d be taking.

I decided to leave Benjeth’s build alone for the most part; he’d handle a little protection and normal individual healing. The exception being I brought the Asuran skill Pain Inverter, a hex which, at Benjeth’s current rank of 5, reflects 108% of the damage a mob deals right back onto it, ignoring the mobs armor too. I also brought the Deldrimor skill Breath of the Great Dwarf which removes burning on the whole party as well as providing a party-wide heal. Not bad having a single skill that both heals and removes the burning condition on the entire group for a cost of only 10 energy. I brought along Ogden and Dunkoro (Hero monks) and gave them each Holy Haste, an enchant to make their Healing Prayers spell cast 50% faster, and Light of Deliverance, an elite party heal. These would serve as their bread and butter for keeping the group alive with fast group heals, though I also gave them some single-target heals as well, to help Benjeth while their LoD refreshed. To handle the Great Destroyer, I chose Koss because I already had him configured as a warrior specializing in axe mastery, which tends to have a good selection of skills that cause a Deep Wound, lowering the maximum health of the target. I gave Koss every Deep Wound-ing, heavy damage axe attack I could find, along with an interrupt. All that was left was hiring four henchmen to complete the group. My choices were: Herta, hoping her melee and elemental wards would provide some additional protection from the destroyers and burning. Eve to keep the monks’ energy up and her elite health degeneration hex. I was concerned about the Great Destroyer’s armor, and health degeneration bypasses armor. Aidan for heavy ranged dps without interrupts. Some alliance-mates suggested keeping interrupts to a minimum so where I’d usually hire Zho, I thought better of it for this fight. Finally, reliable Mhenlo for more healing prayers.

With Benjeth’s strike team assembled and prepared for battle, High Priest Alkar once again sent us through the gate into the Great Destroyer’s lava chamber. From the placement of his destroyer guards, it appeared we may only need to fight a few in order to clear a path to the Great Destroyer. However, I was concerned that, being a boss he may be able to summon help (true) and also that he may kite us into his guard’s aggro radius (also true), which Guild Wars mobs love to do. So rather than taking the easy path then having it come back and bite us later, I decided to clear all the guards in the chamber. For the most part, this was trivial with Koss’ Deep Wounds and Eve’s health degen and four monks keeping everyone going. A few times the Great Destroyer would summon more destroyers, as well as hitting us with an AoE knockdown, but I kept the group at a distance from him. In short order the guards were down and we turned our eyes to the Great Destroyer. I put a protective enchant on Koss, who shouted an armor buff then charged in and engaged the Great Destroyer, immediately causing a Deep Wound, which Koss unrelentingly maintained for the duration of the encounter. I quickly discovered why my alliance-mates were suggesting not to interrupt the Great Destroyer too much: every interrupt causes a massive AoE damage spike. If I’d brought Zho along, or a mesmer, even with four monks I may have been challenged to keep the group alive. Between Koss’ Deep Wound condition, Eve’s health degen, dps from the group and reflective damage from Benjeth’s Pain Inverter hex, the fight was over all too quickly, and we were to a cut scene (which ends in a bit of a GW2 hint: the awakening of the ancient dragon Primordus) then whisked off to the Battledepths for a celebration!

For his end-game reward, Benjeth chose Droknar’s Healing Staff! Not only is it very nice-looking, but it’s a perfect version of the healing staff I’d put together for Benjeth; one which not only gives half casting time and half skill refresh, but which also gives the maximum bonus to enchant duration! Benjeth’s usual skill selection relies mostly on enchants so this unique staff will complement the build tremendously.

I got myself settled in today, put my nose to the grindstone (get it?) and finally, after a little over three years playing Guild Wars, I have finally gotten my first-ever set of Elite Armor for one of my characters! The elite sets from Eye of the North appear to cost only 10k gold per piece (plus materials) rather than the 15k gold each that the elite armors from the three campaigns cost, but they didn’t have reputation requirements, so I definitely feel I’ve worked off the extra 5k. And then some.

I haven’t done this much blatant grinding since I was gung-ho to get the PvP mount for my hunter in WoW before one of the patches close to the TBC launch raised the prices quite a bit. I am downright exhausted from putting this much time into repeatedly clearing zones that give Asuran reputation bounties. But, I’m finished (for now) so turn down the lights, crank up the music, and invite the gals from Sex & the City, here’s a little Monk fashion show!

First, Benjeth appears for the final time in his original Sacred armor, crafted by Seifred in Droknar’s Forge!

Next, Benjeth appears in undyed Asuran armor, crafted by Klub in Rata Sum!

Finally, we decided to spice things up and give Benjeth a look all his own!

There are a couple other elite armor sets I’m interested in obtaining for Benjeth, not to mention my alts. But for now… I’m setting my sights on getting Benjeth through the final dungeon in Eye of the North!

In a perfect example of my short attention span, I specifically stated I was intending to actively pursue my Asuran reputation to get Benjeth his first-ever set of elite armor. Somehow I wound up repeatedly trying (and repeatedly failing, badly) to compete in the Norn Fighting Tournament to unlock the final hero, Kahmu. The Bison Cup too, just for the hell of it, but Kahmu is my primary motivation. Next I ended up in Elona working on my Lightbringer points to achieve rank 3 to get the final skill, an elite signet. Farming points got me curious once more about the ever-vaunted “55 Monk.” I’d gotten all the requisite gear for the build last year, but had never actually practiced 55-ing. No time like the present, eh?

Experienced Guild Wars players are probably shaking their heads that it’s taken me this long to do it, but I figure better late than never, right? For the rest of you, I’ll give an explanation of the 55 Monk concept, which is essentially one of the most effective ways to solo farm with a monk in PvE. In this case, “solo” specifically means your monk is the only character out there; not grouped with anyone else. Non-Guild Wars players often consider the notion of having a full group of AI Heroes and Henchmen to be soloing, but to a GW player, that’s still a full group. The number of human-played characters is irrelevant; solo means only one character.

Read the rest of this entry »

I got into Guild Wars’ first and only expansion, Eye of the North, when it was first released. I was pretty close to completing its storyline when guild drama occurred and I stopped playing. Darren announced during the recording of Shut Up We’re Talking #26 that he was playing and enjoying Guild Wars, and I realized I really missed that. I missed the old guild and alliance chat quite a bit, and that wasn’t coming back, but maybe I’d never given my new guild — one a few formed in the aftermath of the aforementioned guild drama — a proper chance.

I actually spotted Darren online one evening last week and helped him complete a quest and one of his missions on Istan (the “noob island” of the Nightfall campaign). Turns it was Assault on Breknur Harbor, a Master Difficulty quest! I’d always skipped all the Master Difficulty quests, because they’re extremely difficult without either a group of human players or perhaps two players each with a set of Heroes will full builds utilizing elite skills. Assault was fun, but it was certainly an unexpected workout on my monking ability. Darren and I also had monk Heroes which have super-human reactions but even then his Melonni hero was damage spiked at one point so quickly there was no time to react before she was dead. Forgot to get screen shots of all the action, though! Those are always so fun for future blackmail purposes…

The next day, I figured I’d jump back into the Eye of the North. Previously, I’d worked up through the story up to the Heart of the Shiverpeaks dungeon. I had repeatedly taken a group of Heroes and Henchmen and worked my way through the dungeon but the boss, Cyndr the Mountain Heart, proved too difficult for the tactics (or perhaps the lack thereof?) I was using. I forget how many times I’d run that dungeon, both back then and this past week and every time, every tactic, every build change, Cyndr defeated us. Time for players. I first asked in our alliance chat, but not many people were playing at the time so I did one of the most foolish things a GW player can do: a PUG. Yes, I PUG constantly in other games with great success, but GW and WoW both have well-deserved reputations for some of the worst PUG experiences ever. This proved to be one of those times. Shortly after joining the group I was already getting a bad feeling about things just from the chat and build demands. Next came the realization that I was the only human monk player. After five months away from the game, I wasn’t confident in my timing to run around claiming to be some über monk. Not that I would ever do that anyway. I feel I’m ok but certainly not über at monking, but it’s rewarding and fun enough that the monk is always my main character in the game. One of the players did bring a hero monk, but that was it. Judging from their attitudes and build demands, I’d have thought these guys were experienced players and probably knew their way around the dungeon. Not. As soon as we entered one of the warriors took off in the wrong direction. During the first fight they spent more time making fun of which healing spells I used than fighting. Then the warriors ran into a cave of chromatic drakes, which are known to do spike damage. This cave could have been bypassed and was in the wrong direction still. Sure enough, the warrior was spiked in a single hit. He’d ran in before I could apply a protection spell to him. I haven’t seen such chaos in ages, and in short order I was out of energy. By the time it was over, all but one group member was dead, myself included. That was the first big battle and already the group had a -15% death penalty. Of course the entirety of the blame was laid upon my shoulders, go figure, and they spent several minutes announcing it. I haven’t rage-quit in quite some time, but I finally had enough abuse and called it a night.

Not to be put-off, I tried again the next day. I ended up in a pleasant group, no little e-peen waggling kids who couldn’t back up their words, and three monks, including myself. We made our way through the dungeon again, and when confronted with Cyndr again, everyone grabbed a powder keg to take down Cyndr’s carapace shell defense. Once we had his defense down, we were able to make quick work of him before he could regenerate the defense. No deaths!

Next, and I think final, dungeon in the story line: Destruction’s Depths!

Benjeth and I visited the Shing Jea Monastery today for the opening of 2008’s Canthan New Year! Benjeth had an opportunity to participate in some of the festivities last year but not enough for any rewards. Unfortunately I’m working over the entire festival this year as well. I will attempt to get some time in from the hotels on my laptop though; Benjeth really wants a dragon mask to add to his collection.

Shawn just dropped a bombshell today: GLU, the Guildcast fan guild, is going to be disbanded (actually it got so big there are two GLU guilds) and the alliance both GLU’s are members of will be disbanded soon. Shawn will reveal the reason in the next episode of Guildcast.

Off the top of my head I envision one of two possible reasons:

1. Drama. We did have a bit of drama last week that resulted in the departures of a few very well-loved individuals. The departure seemed amicable enough and I don’t know what went on other than what was said in the alliance chat channel. I won’t go into details, especially when I don’t know all of them. If drama is the reason, I can’t say I’m looking forward to the prospect of having GLU’s dirty laundry aired publicly over the podcast.
2. Much like Merlask was hired by Turbine a few months ago, perhaps ArenaNet has hired Shawn! If this is the case, congrats Shawn, I’m so envious it’s not even funny. Shawn working at ArenaNet would most likely mean Guildcast would have to be shut down, as well as Shawn’s other podcasts, Tabulacast and OMG Real Life (actually OMGRL probably wouldn’t be a conflict of interests, though it would be a conflict of Shawn’s available time). The catcher here is that everything associated with the podcast and guilds could be handed over to someone else. Who? Lady Sinaea has her hands full with Ringcast these days but it’s possible someone would step up to the Guildcast plate. It’s already evident that people are willing to step up for GLU itself.

We’ll soon find out if either of my off-the-cuff predictions have any merit, but for the record I feel whether in the long run this ends up as a positive for Shawn and/or for us lowly fans, dropping a bombshell like this then keeping us in the dark until a podcast sheds light on the situation is a poor way to handle it. Whether guild drama was part of the reason or not, the silence is creating drama and tension among those remaining as well as a profound sense of confused sadness. Many have already left GLU not knowing why, and two of the allied guilds have already dissolved their alliance with GLU. In the span of a single day we’ve gone from a huge, friendly, busy alliance to barely anyone remaining and those who do are tense and withdrawn, not knowing what to say since no information is forthcoming until Shawn gets his next podcast out.

Maybe after this is all over I’ll see the wisdom of this approach, but going through it like I am… I do not approve. It is fostering negativity where none existed before.

Update: Episode 90 came out this morning with the explanation. A benign reason after all, and not one that came to mind: burnout. Shawn feels overworked with three podcasts, an upcoming “podiobook” he’s working on, and that not-so-fresh “this is work not fun” feeling about the game. Guildcast has been going strong for two years, and Shawn has decided to quit while he’s ahead rather than allow the show itself to burnout or podfade. In the meantime he’s taking a break from the game and hopes when he returns, minus the podcast work, that the “fun factor” will return in full force as well.

Now that all is disclosed, I am still of the opinion that something could have been said to the GLU membership. The two-day silent treatment took its toll on many of us. Some had a sense of confusion and loss. Many got off a sinking ship without so much as a goodbye. Apparently there was even talk of “overthrowing Shawn” and taking control of the guild which is, of course, not possible. As with any bits of “guild drama” this one, mild and understandable as it is, did much damage to the family feeling that GLU stood for, and that’s a shame.