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Showing posts with label Queen Jennah. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Queen Jennah. Show all posts

Friday, May 23, 2014

Let Them Eat Grumble Cake : GW2

For something that was expected, and no doubt intended, to be a pleasant, relaxing palate-cleanser before the increasingly eagerly-awaited (at least in some corners) Living Story Season Two, the Festival of the Four Winds/Queen's Gauntlet double-header has turned out be a right old controversy generator. Little blame for that can be laid at the gangplank of the Zephyrites. No, it all seems to be Queen Jennah's fault. Again.

Really, she doesn't have much luck with her celebrations. Last time she sent out the Balloonateers to ferry all-comers to Divinity's Reach, her robots went Westworld and Scarlet Briar tried to kill her. At least that time the entertainment she laid on went down tolerably well with the masses, or as we should more properly call them, the zergs.

This time round Scarlet's safely sidelined, six under we assume, although decades of super-villain training tells me never to believe it even if you saw the body buried. Which, come to think of it, we never did, did we? Suspicions aside, she's certainly not around to throw her unfeasibly large mannequin into the works, her aether pirates have found easier plunder who knows where (are they still hanging out in Edge of the Mists? I never go there. I wouldn't know) and all the rest of her motley mash-ups have vanished back down whatever holes they came came from; literally in the case of the Dredge.

Ironic foreshadowing.

No doubt about it then, there's no-one to blame for two of the most unpopular decisions of recent times but Queen Jennah. First she demotes all the Champions in Queensdale to veteran status, thereby closing down the popular Queensdale Champion Train. Then, and you can almost hear her ironic, if regal, laughter, she sends all the Gauntlet Champions on a training course to learn each other's tricks.

Consequence: no more fun times for The People. The forums ring with recriminations. Syp and Ravious offer more considered analyses. Jeromai may be the lone voice striking up in Queen Jennah's defence.

You Zephyrites have some questions to answer too. Call yourself traders? This is a load of old tat!

Meanwhile the Charr stands alone. Never liked the Gauntlet anyway. Was dull, still is. Only thing that's changed is it used to be dull and profitable and now its just dull. Well I imagine it is. Only spent ten minutes there. Better things to do. As for the Queensdale Train, never did it, won't miss it. All the same, makes you think.

It's all very well being blase about these things when they don't affect you but once royalty get the idea they can just lop off any head that doesn't please them you have to wonder whose head might be next. I hope Rytlock's paying attention. Don't we have some kind of treaty? Shouldn't he be calling in the Human ambassador about now and asking what the hell Jennah thinks she's playing at?

Bread and circuses, Your Majesty, if you want you keep the crown on your head. Not bread and water.

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Meta Enough For You Yet? : GW2

Trampled underfoot by the Borlis zerg, my poor Asuran necromancer lying crushed into the dirt at Bay, I took a moment to tab out of GW2 to check Feedly. A link to Massively led me to the following headline :

Release page for Guild Wars 2's upcoming patch vandalized by marauding villain.

For a fleeting moment I thought hackers were back at their tricks but then the wording struck me. No-one short of Shaggy or Velma could conceivably use the term "marauding villain" and expect to be taken seriously. Something stranger than a simple hack attack must have happened.

Indeed it had. ArenaNet have splashed virtual paint over their own website, slashed red crosses through Queen Jennah's eyes and turned her pouting smile into a scary clown frown. Well, it got my attention. I'm a sucker for a touch of postmodern decontextualization, me.

A few very lucky websites also received this lovely fob-watch. Perks of the job I guess. (The GW2Guru folks kindly donated theirs to the upcoming Pink Day In LA charity event).



With the watch came a rather clumsily scanned poem. I won't reproduce the whole thing, but the first verse is certainly intriguing:

Tick tock goes the clock
It's almost time for time to stop
Something you all must understand
Your world is built on fog and sand

Make of that what you will. It's almost enough to make me believe Jeromai's theory. I hope that is where we're going with this. It wouldn't be original but at least it would be a closed loop, and I've wanted to know what those Steam creatures were up to since the first time I ran into them out in Lornar's Pass.

It all kicks off on the 20th, which falls very conveniently between the end of the ultra-short FFXIV open beta and the beginning of Head Start. After all this build-up, I do hope it's a one-off event like the Karka invasion last November, even if that means I miss it and end up watching it on YouTube. I'd really hate to think all this is leading to something that repeats every couple of hours so we can go on another two-week Achievement binge.
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