Off The Map : GW2

World vs World may be addictive, thrilling, rah! rah! rah!. All of that. Mad King Pumpkinhead vs Crazy Prince Eddie may make for an amusing, if slightly tasteless, diversion. Swatting Tequaatl may get you a tiddly dragon and a title. Fine and dandy.

Don't see much of the world that way, though, do you?

I was flipping idly through the pages of my Achievement book, passing time waiting for something to happen, most likely Righteous Indignation to fade off some choleric camp Supervisor, when I happened to notice I was just a discovery or three away from notching up Explorer for Ascalon and Maguuma both.

Not being much the Achiever I didn't really know what that meant. I know about the map completion one that by now everyone but me has done. The one where you touch all the things marked on the map. I'm not much of a toucher for the sake of touching. My ranger, made on launch day and played more than anyone else on the team, sits at 58% on that one. None of the other eight come even that close. 

Map completion never struck me as exploring. More like box-ticking. Even the title it gives, "Been There, Done That", reeks of ennui. Ascalon Explorer, on the other hand, now that has a ring to it. And I love Ascalon. Always have. The thought that there might be some bits I hadn't seen came as quite the spur.

What makes an Explorer in Tyria? Turns out it's not hitting those same map completion markers after all. Started out doing that. Scoured my maps for dull dots. Went to light them up. Nothing. Waypoints, maybe? Nah, can't be. Already found all those ages ago.

In the end I had to look it up. To be an Explorer you have to visit all the places that sit on the map with their names in white letters and pop up once across the screen the first time you cross some invisible border. Anywhere still waiting to be found remains a blur on the map and there were two blurs right there in Blazeridge Steppes.

The first was way off to the Northeast, as far as you can travel; on the way to nowhere with no reason ever to go. I went. There's a cave filled with Secessionist rebels and a Charr outside offering her heart for help. A heart full of fondness for me, which is more than I could say in return. I didn't remember her at all.

I'd been here before, long ago, then, but it seems I didn't go deep enough. Exploring the cave over the cooling bodies of the dead, in a room far at the back I saw broken stairs that looked like you might climb them if you could only reach. Some clambering and leaping with that feline grace so emblematic of the Charr brought my head against the high ceiling and lo and behold a hole, invisible from the ground.


Through the hole, a hidden valley, home to wild boar. A grizzled old one did his best to gore me but I put him down, skinned him then took my pick to mine the rich node he'd been using for a scratching post. Save for the odd aggressive giant pig it was a truly idyllic spot. Verdant, lush, fed by its own clearwater stream and quiet. So quiet.

Did finding it make me an explorer? Yes...and no. It made me an actual, virtual explorer for sure. I'd poked around and scrabbled and found somewhere I never knew existed, that possibly most people who've ticked all the boxes have never seen, but it didn't increment the Ascalon Explorer counter. After all, there was only one white name in that corner of the map, Terra Carorunda, and I already had that from when I'd helped that Charr with her secessionist problem all those months ago.

Back to the map. Look! There's a fuzzy bit in Iron Marches to the West. A swift trip through the aether to an adjacent waypoint led to a disturbing discovery: The Infestation. Perhaps it's best to draw a veil over the descent through caves glowing weirdly with the sickly purple light of The Brand, the rubble-strewn floor thick with nests, the distorted chittering of countless corrupted devourers, the battle with that massive Branded Siege Devourer and, most terrifying of all, the huge and terrifying Branded Devourer Queen, skittering across the corpses of the Sentinels foolish enough to challenge her.

That was the place alright. No-one in their right mind would go in there and I hadn't either. Well now I had. One more discovery to go. Back to Blazeridge to gawp at the closed, barred gates of the Ogre stronghold Agrak Kraal. Will we ever see them opened or will they always keep their secrets close, like so many more?

All told, the whole adventure took not much more than an hour but chances are I'll remember it long after all the keep saves and candy runs are forgotten. There's a whole, wide world out there and I still haven't seen the half of it. Next stop, Maguuma.

This Land Is Our Land: GW2

Way back in April when we picked Yak's Bend as our server for the first Guild Wars 2 beta weekend, we didn't just pull a name out of a hat. Yak's Bend is where the world begins to open out in the original game, the point at which, after days of desperate struggle, hard-fought every yard through Charr hordes that never stop coming, at last you find a moment to catch your breath.

See this bend? This bend is mine.

Two abiding memories from the first run through the original Guild Wars are my complete shock on the fall of Ascalon and my immense sense of relief on reaching Yak's Bend. I played GW1 from launch but buying it was a late and somewhat spontaneous decision. I'd read little about it and had no foreknowledge of the plot. I loved pre-Searing Ascalon from the moment I arrived there and had no idea it would be snatched away from me so soon.

Come Guild Wars 2, I was always going to play a Charr. From the moment I realized, years after wading hip-deep through Charr blood with Prince Rurik, they were cats not demons as I'd thought, I was forced to re-evaluate and from that moment on there was no choice. Still, I didn't imagine I'd get what I'd always wanted; Ascalon back.

The orange is nice but I preferred it how you had it before

There are people, crazy people, who stay in pre-Searing Ascalon until they're fully grown. These are the Iron Men and Women of Guild Wars, ennobled with a title: Legendary Defender of Ascalon. Here's what they went through to earn that name. When players unfamiliar with the elder game question the design ethos behind GW2's Legendary Weapons, behavior like this is a factor they may not have taken into account.

Read it and weep, human.

I tried it once. I got to level 12 before I came to my senses. Life is quite literally too short. I gave up any hope of living in the eternal summer of pre-searing Ascalon. How ironic, then, that the door to that lost past should be re-opened by the same Charr who slammed it shut in my face all those years ago.

Go North-East from Lion's Arch and there, between the Shiverpeak and Blazeridge mountain ranges lies Ascalon. From Black Citadel, the great Charr capital built on the ruins of the human city of Rin, east through the Plains of Ashford to Blazeridge Steppes and north across the Diessa Plateau through the Iron Marches to Fireheart Rise, the Charr hold it all.

Being a cow doesn't give you a pass on training

Um, over here?

Every step is filled with wonder. The high summer idyll of the pre-Searing has ripened into an eternal Autumn, the fall after The Fall. The colors burnish with copper and gold, red poppies flag against the sunburned grasslands, white clouds mass the bluing sky. Ascalon is a land patched by farms, ribboned with ruins, haunted by ghosts figurative and literal. Its lakes are blue and deep, its caves dark and beckoning. There's treasure everywhere.

Out of these golden lands rise the cobalt holdings of the Charr. With all the dwarves gone Charr engineering stands unchallenged (quiet now, that Asura at the back...). Rather than scars or blisters, these massive edifices fit the land like giant puffballs, muted bluetones melding into the umber, soft curves blending into rolling hills, jagged edges natural as thornbriar.

This beautiful country has its dangers. Ghosts and devourers rise from the ground, bandits and revolutionaries bar the paths, ogres and harpies cleave to their own wild ways and may the gods that don't exist have mercy if you cross them. The Dredge, the Grawl, the Skritt pursue their own oblique agendas. Still, these are lands that can be explored with pleasure, if with care.

You can laugh now but in fifty years they'll be listed

Some must fight so all can live, as they say, but maybe not right now. Unlike Orr and the south, across Ascalon there is time to stop and take a look around between battles, to lie down in the long grass once in a while and rest.

Even the dragon, The Shatterer, had the good sense to set the mark of his Lordship on these lands with a scar instead, like Zhaitan, of flinging all to chaos. The Brand runs livid in the purples of a bruise across the back of Ascalon, but the Branded, unlike the Risen, keep to their rut.

Could have sworn I heard an Asura...

At the southern limit of the Charr's influence, Ascalon's, maybe Tyria's, loveliest city waits. Ebonhawke, thick-walled fortress with its wide streets going down to grass feels old as its honey stone. Saved the brash assertion of Rata Sum or the wild imagining of Lion's Arch, Ebonhawke stands more solid, evokes more empathy than either.

Does no-one in Ebonhawke own a scythe?

To the far North autumn gives way to winter as it must. Despite thick fur, Charr are cats and do not like the cold. The Norn may have the snow and welcome. As for the Baelfire, let the Flame Legion skulk among the cinders there, planning their plans. Few would envy them. No, the Charr fought for the heart of Ascalon, and now they have it, revel in it and will hold it long.

Had Guild Wars 2 been only Ascalon and only Charr I would have been more than satisfied. I am more than satisfied.