I spent all of today thinking it was still Sunday. Such is the sleep-deprived gaming haze I've been living the last several days courtesy of Guild Wars 2.
The game is amazing, though far from flawless. Took my Thief up to 15 before I decided I needed a break and starting leveling my Necromancer instead, and I just kept going. Very close to 30 now.
There's so much I could write about that I'm having trouble calling into words because I'm pretty sleepy right now. I've been sleeping in 3-4 hour spurts every so often ever since Friday night. The new release, unemployment, wonky sleeping pattern, and generally being awake at night instead of daytime has created a perfect storm of temporal dissonance.
I did indeed make it onto Jade Quarry after putting it at the top of a list of servers I was shooting for based on a combination of GW2Guilds.org and the Asura Labs server poll for a high number of sPvP and WvWvW focused guilds. And it really shows, Jade Quarry is very rarely not utterly destroying the two other servers it's matched up against in WvWvW. Tentatively joined a guild called Elite Obsession that described itself as aiming for "competitive WvWvW", but I was slightly dismayed at the paltry 25-30 members. The guild leader said his goal is to have 100 members by Friday, which will be great if he can deliver. Plus since you can have multiple guilds (something that I haven't seen since FFXI) there's no harm in giving them a shot.
Monday, August 27, 2012
Monday, August 20, 2012
Guild Wars 2 Character Planning
Finally sat down and read through all the skills on the Wiki to get at least a cursory understanding of the flavor of the abilities of the game. Did a little preliminary character planning as well, figured out what class/race/name combos I want to go with. Reusing a lot of names I used in SWTOR but I ditched a few I thought were lackluster and replaced others.
I really like a lot of the skills on Guardians, but at the same time I would like to start by playing a class archtype I'm less familiar with and tentatively settled on Thief after having also considered Ranger. Going to start with a Thief, Guardian, Necromancer, Mesmer, and Warrior. Aside from having decided to start with a Thief first, I've enjoyed playing tanky archtypes in PvP in the past so Guardian is a natural choice and Necromancer was lots of fun in GW1. The latter two are classes that Taugrim's done a lot of writing on so far so there will be a little less guesswork when I have time to play those classes. I'll add Engineer, Ranger, and Elementalist characters as I get a chance to.
I picked races whose abilities (though irrelevant I realize) complement certain classes at least thematically. I've got at least one of every race for the purposes of experiencing some of the differing stories but am planning to go with only one each of Asurans and Charr since I like their aesthetic the least. In the end my race choices are perhaps a little to stereotypical, but eh.
Meanwhile, I've still been half-heartedly trying to get HoM points but I'm past trying to force myself to continue for difficult statues at this point. Been trying to get through at least the first disc of Xenogears before Saturday too.
Brandon and I used to have an inside joke referring to Xenogears: Xenobeers, a game staring Gen from SaGa Frontier as he drinks and swash-buckles his away across the world/galaxy/universe.
Also, I'm now formally consigning this blog to Guild Wars 2 for the foreseeable future. As such I'll be adding a bunch of helpful links to the eponymous section of the blog.
I really like a lot of the skills on Guardians, but at the same time I would like to start by playing a class archtype I'm less familiar with and tentatively settled on Thief after having also considered Ranger. Going to start with a Thief, Guardian, Necromancer, Mesmer, and Warrior. Aside from having decided to start with a Thief first, I've enjoyed playing tanky archtypes in PvP in the past so Guardian is a natural choice and Necromancer was lots of fun in GW1. The latter two are classes that Taugrim's done a lot of writing on so far so there will be a little less guesswork when I have time to play those classes. I'll add Engineer, Ranger, and Elementalist characters as I get a chance to.
I picked races whose abilities (though irrelevant I realize) complement certain classes at least thematically. I've got at least one of every race for the purposes of experiencing some of the differing stories but am planning to go with only one each of Asurans and Charr since I like their aesthetic the least. In the end my race choices are perhaps a little to stereotypical, but eh.
Meanwhile, I've still been half-heartedly trying to get HoM points but I'm past trying to force myself to continue for difficult statues at this point. Been trying to get through at least the first disc of Xenogears before Saturday too.
Brandon and I used to have an inside joke referring to Xenogears: Xenobeers, a game staring Gen from SaGa Frontier as he drinks and swash-buckles his away across the world/galaxy/universe.
Also, I'm now formally consigning this blog to Guild Wars 2 for the foreseeable future. As such I'll be adding a bunch of helpful links to the eponymous section of the blog.
Jee Dubya Wun
So a few days back someone brought the Hall of Monuments Rewards to my attention, so being as I have tons of free time till next weekend I managed to do the impossible and get back into Guild Wars 1. Kind of.
The first thing that struck me booting up GW again was the name scheme, which brings back a lot of memories. At the time, when my good friend Nick, aka Spinky IV or Spinaci [Olive Garden] (OG REPRESENT), talked me into trying Guild Wars I had only played two other MMOs up to that point--FFXI and LotRO.
I'd spent my 2 year career in Final Fantasy XI as a bearded male hume called Kurohyou, which was my best attempt at translating "Pantera" to Japanese--I realized much later that "kuro" is actually black, but just "Hyou" would have been kinda lame anyways. Since all my GW characters all shared the surname Pantera, I ended up naming my Elementalist Nero for my old FFXI character.
During the Lord of the Rings Online beta I'd used the name Pantera, but shortly after release I was forced to change the name (the first twist of the dagger that wrecked my interest in that game). In my flustered state the only name I could come up with was the alias one of the creators of EliteMUD (which I'd spent a few years of my youth playing), Kurrelgyre. I ended up giving this name to my Warrior in Guild Wars. In retrospect this seems like a weird decision, or at least one I wouldn't have made now; since I'd used the name Kurrelgyre begrudgingly it's odd that I'd give it to my "main"--I was a WAR main in FFXI and it became my most played character in GW (and my first character in WoW, incidentally, though in every case they're much different from Warrior in FFXI).
Many of my other characters' names were references to my MMO past as well. Tek, Valencia, and Gravios were names of my mule alts in FFXI (Gravios was a further reference to a dragon in Monster Hunter). Desyrel was an alias I used in LotRO, and was the first seed of what would eventually grow to be my current general MMO naming scheme. Coming up on a lack of ideas, I named two after myself and my grandfather, then randomly went with Miang for one, likely with Xenogears in mind (which is interesting providence considering I've been replaying through Xenogears on emulator to pass time lately as well). Named one for Fargo, where I'd been living most of my life up until a year ago.
I nearly forgot how unilaterally awesome Guild Wars was/is though. It's an excellent prototype for what a game with horizontal scaling would look like. Even if I didn't love GW's PvP (which I do), there's plenty of PvE content on various levels that manages to be both challenging and rewarding, even it's as basic as pimping out a horde of Heroes.
Anyways, I'm shooting for 30/50 even though it's probably a little impractical. I managed to get 7+/50 pretty quick just on HoM statues I basically already had (which was enough to get the legacy armor pieces), but the item rewards end at 30 so I'm trying to get as far as I realistically can in a week. A lot of the statues are extremely difficult to get on short notice, so I'm aiming for as much of the low hanging fruit ones as I already have progress towards.
The first thing that struck me booting up GW again was the name scheme, which brings back a lot of memories. At the time, when my good friend Nick, aka Spinky IV or Spinaci [Olive Garden] (OG REPRESENT), talked me into trying Guild Wars I had only played two other MMOs up to that point--FFXI and LotRO.
I'd spent my 2 year career in Final Fantasy XI as a bearded male hume called Kurohyou, which was my best attempt at translating "Pantera" to Japanese--I realized much later that "kuro" is actually black, but just "Hyou" would have been kinda lame anyways. Since all my GW characters all shared the surname Pantera, I ended up naming my Elementalist Nero for my old FFXI character.
During the Lord of the Rings Online beta I'd used the name Pantera, but shortly after release I was forced to change the name (the first twist of the dagger that wrecked my interest in that game). In my flustered state the only name I could come up with was the alias one of the creators of EliteMUD (which I'd spent a few years of my youth playing), Kurrelgyre. I ended up giving this name to my Warrior in Guild Wars. In retrospect this seems like a weird decision, or at least one I wouldn't have made now; since I'd used the name Kurrelgyre begrudgingly it's odd that I'd give it to my "main"--I was a WAR main in FFXI and it became my most played character in GW (and my first character in WoW, incidentally, though in every case they're much different from Warrior in FFXI).
Many of my other characters' names were references to my MMO past as well. Tek, Valencia, and Gravios were names of my mule alts in FFXI (Gravios was a further reference to a dragon in Monster Hunter). Desyrel was an alias I used in LotRO, and was the first seed of what would eventually grow to be my current general MMO naming scheme. Coming up on a lack of ideas, I named two after myself and my grandfather, then randomly went with Miang for one, likely with Xenogears in mind (which is interesting providence considering I've been replaying through Xenogears on emulator to pass time lately as well). Named one for Fargo, where I'd been living most of my life up until a year ago.
I nearly forgot how unilaterally awesome Guild Wars was/is though. It's an excellent prototype for what a game with horizontal scaling would look like. Even if I didn't love GW's PvP (which I do), there's plenty of PvE content on various levels that manages to be both challenging and rewarding, even it's as basic as pimping out a horde of Heroes.
Anyways, I'm shooting for 30/50 even though it's probably a little impractical. I managed to get 7+/50 pretty quick just on HoM statues I basically already had (which was enough to get the legacy armor pieces), but the item rewards end at 30 so I'm trying to get as far as I realistically can in a week. A lot of the statues are extremely difficult to get on short notice, so I'm aiming for as much of the low hanging fruit ones as I already have progress towards.
Thursday, August 16, 2012
Jee Dubya Too
After toying with the idea for a few days, I've decided to pick up Guild Wars 2. Bought the game a few days back. This is despite not having followed it at all through development and beta testing and knowing very little about the game proper. I'm nervous about diving in not knowing much about the game's mechanics, but I'm hoping that it'll add some to the charm so I've been trying to stay at least a little in the dark.
I played the original Guild Wars and absolutely loved it, so I have faith that its sequel will deliver. I played it briefly in that nebulous period between FFXI and WoW. It's been ages now since I played it; I have this strange problem with Guild Wars where I can't get back into it whenever I try to go back. I'm not a big PvPer but of the MMOs I've played it was Guild Wars that had the PvP I enjoyed the most.
My primary concern right now is that I don't know anyone else who's planning on playing it, and this has proven to hamper my experience with other MMOs in the past. I'm fretting slightly over how much I should balance my attention between PvE or PvP too, being as GW was traditionally more of a PvP focused game (which is great, IMO MMOs need to pick one to focus on) and myself not having a strong taste for PvP. But who knows, I've played smatterings of PvP whether it be in the original GW, WoW, and SWTOR et al. in addition to arena style PvP a la MOBAs (LoL, HoN, Dota 2) and found some enjoyment.
I've been following Taugrim's amazing MMO blog more closely as GW2 approaches. I've used his guides as references for SWTOR before and it's quality stuff. He's generally more focused on PvP gameplay so I'm letting it be my introduction to GW2's PvP.
I'll mayhaps convert this blog to a Guild Wars 2 focus coming up in a few weeks; we'll see how things roll along.
I played the original Guild Wars and absolutely loved it, so I have faith that its sequel will deliver. I played it briefly in that nebulous period between FFXI and WoW. It's been ages now since I played it; I have this strange problem with Guild Wars where I can't get back into it whenever I try to go back. I'm not a big PvPer but of the MMOs I've played it was Guild Wars that had the PvP I enjoyed the most.
My primary concern right now is that I don't know anyone else who's planning on playing it, and this has proven to hamper my experience with other MMOs in the past. I'm fretting slightly over how much I should balance my attention between PvE or PvP too, being as GW was traditionally more of a PvP focused game (which is great, IMO MMOs need to pick one to focus on) and myself not having a strong taste for PvP. But who knows, I've played smatterings of PvP whether it be in the original GW, WoW, and SWTOR et al. in addition to arena style PvP a la MOBAs (LoL, HoN, Dota 2) and found some enjoyment.
I've been following Taugrim's amazing MMO blog more closely as GW2 approaches. I've used his guides as references for SWTOR before and it's quality stuff. He's generally more focused on PvP gameplay so I'm letting it be my introduction to GW2's PvP.
I'll mayhaps convert this blog to a Guild Wars 2 focus coming up in a few weeks; we'll see how things roll along.
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