A Piece Of Lost Dead Past

One of the featurettes included with Guild Wars 2's latest update, Visions of the Past, is the option to replay four instanced scenarios originally released during the first season of the Living World. I remembered the quartet quite well.

The North Nolan Hatchery was, I thought, the very first Living Story instance although looking back it seems Braham's retaking of Cragstead were both part of the March 2013 update, Flame and Frost: The Razing.  Back then I was quite complimentary about the Rox vignette, saying "The nursery instance was exactly the right degree of hard. I completed it without dying but I was downed a few times and it looked touch and go for a while".

That's quite instructive, isn't it? I very much doubt anyone's going to get downed in the Nolan Hatchery this time around. I did the instance yesterday and it was distinctly on the easy side. I brisked through it with only half a mind on what I was doing. We've all come along long way since 2013, not least Rox.

Before you get to relive the glory days there's some paperwork to complete. I was expecting one of ArenaNet's patented "Collects", GW2 code for quests, but it turned out to be a lot simpler than that. All you need to do is visit each of the orignal locations where the instances took place and find a "memento" of the occasion.

The hatchery and Braham's village, Cragstead, were both turned into permanent zones in the game when the Living Story moved on. You've been able to visit them, walk around and chat to NPCs there for years. I guess that dims the nostalgia a little but it makes finding the mementos very straightforward. Just go into the instance and keep heading deeper until you can't go any further. There you'll find a sparkling ground spawn with a big label atached. Can't hardly miss it.

The other two are very slightly harder to spot. The two instances in question no longer exist in the game so the mementos are just lying around outside where they used to be. I had a bit of trouble with the one for the krait tower, now lying in pieces across much of Viathan Lake in Kessex Hills, to the point that I eventually cracked and went to YouTube to watch a video made by someone with better eyesight than me.

Not only was the damn thing in pretty much the first place I'd tried, I'd actually looked right at it, seen it, wondered what it was, then left it lying there so I could spend ten minutes swimming about in toxic waste. Somehow I missed both the sparkles and the sign. Go me!

The last one is definitely the "hardest" to grab, although that's not saying much. It's pretty straightforward to find but karka are annoying even now. and it's down a coral run close to the jumping puzzle on Southsun Cove that's teeming with the infuriating little crabs..

Each pick-up completes an achievement and allows you to access the related instance from the Scrying Pool in the new Eye of the North. I did them all before I went back so I'm not sure if you can use them piecemeal or wehther you have to collect all four to make anything happen.

The four instances you receive access to are:

The only one I've done so far is North Nolan Hatchery. Cragstead I remember as being fairly dull and the toxic tower/krait tower as annoying but Canach's Lair I must have liked well enough because I wrote a guide for it. I might do that one again if I'm stuck for something to do some day.

Other than that, I'm not really all that fussed. It's nice to have the option, sure, but I can't honestly say I've thought about any of these instances even in passing these last six or seven years. Now, if it was the Marionette...

The decision to make the instances uniquely available via the Scrying Pool is very interesting. Anet could have chosen to place the zone-ins at the original locations or even through a UI element but instead they made sure we'd have to travel to the Eye of the North each time.

There's a clear intent to turn the Eye into something more than just another service hub. As well as the season one missions you can also access all the sub-raid "Strike" missions from there. It has something of the feel of one of the lobby zones from the original Guild Wars, particularly with the Xunlai storage chests lying about by the wall.

Eye of the North is described as an "upgradeable instance", which is true if what you understand by the word upgrade is "pay a one-time fee to use our services". I really can't see any point in this but I guess it's harmless enough.

Why anyone would want to access these services in this location sufficiently often to justify the effort and expense involved in setting them up beats me. I'd just hit "B" and go to the WvW hub for banking and broking, then hit "B" again to be returned to the Eye. I certainly wouldn't pay fifty gold for the privelige although I imagine some GW vets will think it's worth it just for the nostalgic frisson of banking with the Xunlai again, even if the Xunlai themselves are long gone.

As for crafting, I suppose you could just about imagine someone needing to make something urgently before a Strike mission but it's a bit far-fetched.

And that's about it for the Visions update. I quite enjoyed some of it.

Next!

A Vision Sent From The Past

Yesterday's official announcement of the already-leaked Guild Wars 2 update, Visions of the Past: Steel and Fire, threw me for something of a loop. What exactly is it?

I notice there's no specific mention of the Living Story/World or of the Icebrood Saga. This doesn't appear to be the next instalment of... anything. It's more a ragbag collection of odd ends.

If it has any theme or structure it would seem to be about looking backwards while glancing ahead. Part of the update focuses on fleshing out one of the least appealing players in the ongoing storyline, the uncharismatic cypher that is Ryland Steelcatcher. He suffers from being the offspring of two far more interesting characters, Rytlock Brimstone and Crecia Stoneglow and he certainly could do with some help if he's to ever going to stand alone.

Someone at ArenaNet must have faith in him, though, because Ryland is the peg on which they've chosen to hang public awareness and acceptance of the new Visions concept. It's a mechanic that will be all too wearyingly familiar to veteran players of other MMORPGs, where having your character stuffed into a cosplay version of some familiar NPC has long been a fallback position for developers with more interest in promoting their own creations than facilitating ours.

I do sometimes get the impression that a significant proportion of the ever-diminishing subset of GW2 players who still care about the plot don't have much experience of or interest in other MMORPGs. For them, this may come as a welcome new experience.

For the rest of us, I suspect it will just turrn out to be another of the usual "learn five new skills while we set you on fire" keymashing farragos we've suffered through too many times already in Living Story instances, only this time we'll all be dressed as pantomime cats, but hey, who knows, maybe ANet will find some way to make it work.I reserve the right to be grudgingly impressed, should the occasion arise.

The rest of the update looks potentially more enjoyable, although I stress "potentially". Given the game presumably relies almost entirely on cash shop sales to surrvive, let alone prosper, ANet's unwillingness to monetize what would undoubtedly become a major revenue stream in fully customizeable housing remains a source of puzzlement. Instead, they prefer to lurk in the dismal shadow of home makeover shows by offering us upgradeable NPC bases.

This time we get to fit out the Eye Of The North, an instance that originally served as a pre-launch incentive but which now acts as a lair for the friendly (?) dragon, Aurene. I haven't managed to summon up the enthusiasm to click my portal stone and find out just how the new version dovetails with the previous Hall of Monuments. Maybe that will change with the March update. Or more likely it won't if the last upgradeable lair is anything to go by. I haven't visited the Sunspear cave, the name of which I've completely forgotten, since the week it appeared.

Then there's a "Public Mission", which I think is a new sub-category of "things to keep people logging in". The brief description reads "Meet Ryland Steelcatcher’s companions and accompany them on a high-stakes mission to battle the Ancient Forgeman." As yourself, I am guessing, rather than zipped into yet another cat suit or while play-acting as Ryland himself.

Since "your job is to blow stuff to smithereens with a cutting-edge charr tank", however, it's entirely possible you won't need to be bothered with a character model at all, let alone your own class abilities, which will presumably be replaced by a big red button marked "Fire". Well, we can hope.

The only thing that puzzles me about this is what makes it "Public". Will the five charr in Ryland's warband be accompanied by a full armored division as a squad of fifty players, all driving charr tanks, crush all before them in their headlong charge for loot and glory? Or is it some kind of ten-person Strike mission? In which case, what's "public" about that?

Dunno. And, frankly, don't care. As of this writing I have yet to even try a Strike mission. Mrs Bhagpuss gave up on the Icebrood Saga after the Prelude. We both still log in every day but it wouldn't make much difference if nothing new was ever added again because everything we do has been in the game for many, many years.

Some of it since Living Story Season One, in fact, to offer an inelegant segue into the final, most intriguing element of Visions of the Past, the return of "four story missions from the first season of Living World for the first time ever!" This was the part I found both the most welcome and the most confusing.

Although I had some reservations about it at the time, a quick dip into the archives here confirms that mostly I enjoyed the first season as it happened. My affection for it has grown over the years, partly through the inevitable nostalgia of the passing of time but mostly because of how much less I enjoyed each subsequent season, which made the first look better and better all the time.

The thing I mainly liked about Season One, though, was the chaotic surge of the massive-scale open world events. I loved the manic waypointing, the hysteria in General Chat, the rampaging zergs, the wild, howling desperate frenzy of it all. It seemed then and seems now to exemplify the first two letters in the acronym of the genre: Massively Multiple.

I'd almost forgotten there were instances as well - and I don't believe there ever were any "Missions", that being a term added to the game in latter years. Whatever you want to call them, someone's found four to bring back for a very belated encore.

The puff reads "Get to know Rox and Braham, face Scarlet’s toxic forces, and remember how far Canach’s come in his time with you." That rings some bells. I recall the one where we first meet Rox in the North Nolan Nursery and one involving Braham in Cragstead. Both of those have been in the game as visitable maps ever since so I guess now we'll be able to re-run the original conversations and combats as well.

Cannach's Lair has, I think, been inaccessible since Season One. It involved bombs and traps, I remember that much. I even wrote a guide for it, which could come in useful. I wonder if I'll get any fresh hits when the update goes live?

As for "face Scarlet's toxic forces", that could mean anything. We fought them for the best part of two years, on and off. I bet it means The Toxic Tower, though. I was very glad to see the back of that in 2013. I have no wish ever to see it again although curiosity will probably drag me in for one last look.

If Anet are going to carry on down this line, what I'd really like to see brought back are the big ticket events from later in the Scarlet storyline. The three that would definitely get me logging in for nostalgic fun and genuine entertainment would be Battle For Lion's Arch, Marionette and the final showdown with Scarlet herself in her mothership.

The Scarlet finale was instanced to begin with so you'd imagine that wouldn't be hard to revive. Lion's Arch was a full map replacement but I don't see why it couldn't be revisited as a full map instance. Marionette, at the time the best event the game had seen and still among the best even now, took place in the open world but could quite easily be turned into an instance, you'd think, seeing Scarlet staged it in what amounts to an arena-sized enclosed space.

It is, at least, an intriguing development. I look forward to seeing where, if anywhere, it goes from here. It also occurs to me that this could be the closest Anet get to having their share of the increasingly popular, mainstream and profitable Progression and Classic Server pie, currently being gobbled down by the likes of Daybreak, Blizzard, Jagex and Funcom.

It never does to understimate the public's hunger for a juicy slice of their own past.

The Good, The Bag and The Ugly : GW2

So, here's the question. Did the latest chapter of GW2's Living Story live up to the promise of that trailer?

Hmm. Yes and no. Leaving aside the inevitable problem of raised expectations, in some respects "A Bug in the System" is certainly one of ArenaNet's better efforts. In others....not so much.

I'm trying to avoid spoilers but the format of these things is so very well established by now - not to say ritualized - that there's not that much to spoil. Some traveling, some banter, a lot of large battles, a couple of boss fights, a new map with a new currency, the whole thing wrapped up in two to three hours. This is also one of the episodes with a lot of "puzzles" and non-combat sections, of which we tend to get one or two each Season.

As Telwyn observes, the Boss fights aren't as awful as they could be. The first boss is incredibly tedious, as about 90% of the comments in the traditional Living Story Boss Fight Complaint Thread confirm. It's just a massive hit point sponge in a confined space most of which is on fire most of the time. The usual, in other words. I thought it had outstayed its welcome after about two minutes but it hung around for a lot longer than that. I didn't find it hard other than on my patience. Mrs Bhagpuss loathed it.

I hesitate to say it but the second boss I almost enjoyed. There was a lot more room to move, we went to several different locations, which helped keep things fresh, and even though everything was on fire all the time again, nothing seemed to burn.

The puzzles were very straightforward. I solved them all quickly without needing to look anything up on Google, which was just as well because no-one had had time to write any guides or post any videos, not even Dulfy.

Most could be brute forced anyway. It seems almost to be expected. One of the puzzles even defaults to an option labeled "Brute Force". In the part where you're supposed to sneak, Mrs Bhagpuss ignored instructions and just killed everything, which earned her an achievement.

The new map is very good. It's possibly my favorite Path of Fire map to date, probably because it looks and feels nothing like one. Geographically, it appears to be something akin to a temperate rain forest, lush, filled with lakes and waterfalls and raining all the time. Really, I've spent maybe four or five hours there now and I don't think I've seen the rain let up once. A Portuguese expatriate thanked Anet effusively on the forums for giving him a nostalgic blast of his home country and it's true that parts of it are eerily familiar to the countryside just in from the coast, south of Lisbon.

I like it enough that I'd probably have spent some time there just enjoying the ambience, but for once there are also things I want. There's one thing in particular I might even say I need: a 32 slot bag.

Large bags are a big deal in GW2. For five years the maximum size was stuck at 20 slots, then sometime last year recipes were added allowing crafters to make 24, 28 and 32 slot versions. Unfortunately, that luxury came at a corresponding cost.  A 32 slot bag comes in somewhere close to 250 gold, which in GW2 is a very great deal of money. I haven't been able to bring myself to make one yet.

A free 32-slotter is well worth making an effort to get but in this case what you have to do to get it is also relatively straightforward and quite good fun. You start with the 20-slot "Bandolier" that comes as one of the rewards for finishing the story. You can then upgrade it three times via a series of what any other MMO would call quests but GW2 calls Collections. Dulfy has the full skinny.

I've already done the first two upgrades. Mostly it was running around talking to people or doing events on the map. In part three I think there's one side trip to Elon Riverlands but apart from that it all happens in situ, doing things you'd most likely be doing already if you were there, like the meta or bounties.

As well as the bag there's another upgradeable reward for finishing the story - a back slot item. I don't particularly need another Ascended backpiece but for once this doesn't look entirely hideous. I might even not hide it if I wore it. I'll probably get that next.

Then there are the usual Ascended trinkets from the new currency vendor and various minis and suchlike from the Heart merchants. The map itself is visually delightful. It's very interesting to explore and for once you can do so in relative peace. There are hardly any of the usual cc-crazy PoF mobs that have kept me out of the rest of the expansion these last few months. It all feels much more like a "normal" map and so much better for it.

I'll keep away from the specifics of the plot for now but I have quite a lot to say about the marked change in tone. I noticed it almost immediately. It reminded me of the jarring lurch that often occurs when a new producer or script editor takes control of a long-running tv show. I don't know if there's been a change of personnel in GW2's story department but it certainly feels like it.

Rox has changed in a very literal fashion: she's played by a new voice actor who sounds absolutely nothing like the old one. This has been mildly controversial. I found it offputting. It's not that I was especially fond of the old Rox but I was used to her. Now she's someone else and it's weird. Apparently the writers want to take her character in a new direction, which kind of assumes someone thought her character had a direction to begin with. There's been precious little evidence of that in years.

Presumably Rox's new direction will involve the hitherto unheard-of tribe of Charr hippies we discover, living a peaceful life of fishing, basketweaving and storm-calling that goes entirely counter to everything previously known about the race. Perhaps she'll settle down and try to teach all those precocious cubs some manners. She was working in a nursery when we first met her, after all...

Braham also appears to have a new direction in mind. He still has the same voice but he seems to have had a bang on the head - one that's knocked some sense into him. Between episodes he's dropped 95% of the deeply unpopular brattishness he acquired at the beginning of LS3.

He makes a couple of passing references to his change of heart but everyone is too busy trying not to die to pick him up on it and the issue is neatly kicked into the long grass. There's some awkward "bonding" at the end and that seems to be that. All back to normal, everything forgiven and forgotten.

Where this leaves his obsession with Jormag I have no idea. In the file marked "bad ideas" I imagine, which seems to be where someone has decided to dump most of the inherited baggage of the last couple of years. I can't wait to see who Jory and Kas come back as. I'm betting it won't be the increasingly bizarre, dysfunctional basket cases they were both fast becoming.

All that's probably, or at least possibly, to the good. Not so the Inquest. The Inquest have always been problematic but in this chapter they cross the line into full-on unacceptable. The practices revealed in Rata Prime and the Inquest Labs come straight from the playbook of Dr. Mengele. 

This would be difficult enough from an outright evil organization but The Inquest have always been played at least partially for laughs and this is no exception. It won't wash. Nazi death camps are not a suitable setting for jokes about beaurocracy recycled from Dilbert.


Even worse, in Blish and Gorrik we have two Asurans who - in the most favorable possible light - have been complicit in nightmarish experiments on captured prisoners. Gorrik, by his own admission, has been actively involved. These two should be heading back to Pact Headquarters to be a) interrogated and b) tried for war crimes.

Instead The Commander (aka the Player Character) sets the two little psychopaths up with their erstwhile college friend and current hand-waving apologist Taimi to do some more experimenting - this time for our team. No! Just No!

I may get into that in more detail when spoilers aren't such an issue. For now, to sum up, I liked the gameplay elements of this episode and the basic plot is moving along nicely but as for all the stuff going on in the background...it's all over the place! And isn't this game still rated PEGI 12? There's more horror in a couple of Inquest asides than the whole five hours of DDLC...

Loose Ends, The Tying Up Of : GW2

There's a lagstorm in Southsun right now, the worst I've ever seen. The original Lost Shores event has nothing on it. I disconnected five times in 30 minutes and it was only because it was taking up to three or four minutes for the server to finally kick me out that I got credit for killing the Karka Queen at all. My contribution to the team effort was limited to lying down in a salt pan right at the beginning, standing up briefly half-way through after a revive, then lying down again watching a freeze-frame of the Queen at 25% health until I dropped to character select.

An earlier attempt, in which I survived but so, unfortunately, did the Queen

Logging back in to find my head in a large treasure chest was a bonus, although not as literally so as the actual two-rare Bonus chest jiggling suggestively at me from the lower right corner of the screen. At that point I decided to quit while I was ahead and go elsewhere. I did think about Guesting somewhere quieter but in the middle of the American working day every single US server was running Very High except for Blackgate, Dragonbrand and Tarnished Coast, which were Full. Read into that what you will.

Is that an original Hokusai, Braham?

That's how I came to be wandering idly through Wayfarer's Foothills and into Diessa Plateau where, just as I passed Charrgate Haven, I happened to notice that steam was still venting from the mountainside, which in turn got me to wondering if Cragstead was still there and if so was the gate unlocked. It is and it was.

Cragstead is a hive of activity. Norns are hammering away right and left, children chase each other through the frozen streets between the newbuilt Steads, there are vendors selling food and drink and plenty of people have a moment to chat. Some of them even remembered me, albeit after a little prompting.

Braham has a very nicely decorated new place and some choice things to say about his mother. There's a Shaman of Owl that I found intriguing, and a Charr gladium who's thrown his lot in with the Norn to become a Dolyak Herder, who I found very touching. All in all Cragstead seems to be turning into rather a promising settlement.

And what of The Hatchery? That was something of a surprise, not because it was back in business, nor because Rox was there, both of which I'd expected, but because most of the Charr refugees for whom we recovered precious lost possessions from the Diessa dust seem to have ended up working there too. Even the little cub with the toy soldier has found a Fahrar to take on her training.

As a comic fan of extremely long standing I have a very fine appreciation of continuity but it's something I am not at all used to seeing taken seriously in MMOs. This attention to detail after the fact, unattached as far as I can tell to any Achievement, Event or other practical in-game benefit, is most heartening and strongly to be
encouraged. I fear it may also largely be a wasted effort. I wonder how many players have stopped back to either of these ex-instances to catch up with the folks they supposedly went so far out of their way to help just a few weeks ago?

If Southsun hadn't been so laggy today, I wouldn't have.

Flame + Frost = Farrago: GW2

"Is that it?" was the refrain that echoed across Tyria as the first chapter of the Living Story limped to a close last night. Listening to map chat in Lion's Arch it was apparent that few players had read the press releases, seen the interviews or had the slightest idea what was going on.

Most did know that they were one achievement short of a Box Prize though, and not surprisingly, quite a few thought there might be a pot of gold at the end of the three-month long rainbow. There wasn't.

Next it'll be CCTV in Lion's Arch, you mark my words!

The pot of gold, such as it was, had already arrived with the conclusion of the Rox and Braham storylines more a week ago. A ticket for a pair of exotic gloves too utterly hideous even to contemplate wearing. No-one paid much attention at the time, what with the new dungeon and all. Even the anticlimax was anticlimactic.

What we did get was a bonfire and just how appropriate, in this particular case, was that? You've been driven out of your home by a bunch of burning creatures chanting about fire and setting your settlement ablaze. Do you really want to see more flames? Okay, it's cold in Hoelbrek so the warmth may be welcome but they already have rather a lot of open fires there. All the time. How special does it make you feel that they lit one more little one? And as for Black Citadel, where you're sitting on a solid metal floor that conducts heat and where the enemy at the gate even before all the recent kafuffle was always the Flame Legion? Does any of this make any sense?

In someone's dreams. Not in mine.

Then there's Rox and Braham. Hmm. These two characters that drop out of nowhere. The big, buff Norn and the wide-eyed catgirl.That we all follow. Whose story we are mostly watching, facilitating, a story clearly not our own. After that video I can't but think we're seeing Our Gods walk among us in their Mortal Form. Are we comfortable with that?

Is this whole thing a complete mess or what? I'm not saying its not been fun but has any of it made any sense to anyone? Has anything since the game launched made any sense? Did The Mad King destroying the Lion Statue make sense? Okay, he's mad, he gets a pass. Did the Karka make sense? Did Tixx make sense? The Super Adventure Box? Anything - anything at all - about the Living Story?

Might there be a whole lot of people working very hard on personal projects, obsessions,

We can't all be famous

ideas, getting them into the game with very little in the way of top-down, authoritarian control? Might things be getting greenlighted on a prospectus containing not much more than "wouldn't it be cool if...?"

Not that I'm saying that's a bad thing. Not at all. For my no money it's a considerably better thing than, for example, the approach Rift ended up taking, where players must at all costs not be annoyed, nothing disruptive must ever happen and everyone must get a Fair Go. That makes for an admirably solid, reliable experience but one which, after a while, tends towards the dull.

At least with ANet (as with SOE all these years) you never know quite what might happen next. Sure, some of it, arguably most of it, doesn't really come off but rather a sporadic splurge of exotic failures than a steady stream of stuff designed not to annoy anyone.

In a day or so we're off to Southsun Cove for a couple of weeks. If Team Spring Break (Really? You really want to call yourselves that? In public?) can make that a place worth spending more than five minutes in then I'll be impressed. After that, who knows? This over-excited PR blurb certainly isn't letting on but apparently "it does all tie together".

I'll believe that when I see it but I don't mind if it doesn't. It'll almost certainly be just as much fun if it all falls apart.

Molten Weapons Facility Take 2: GW2

Ravious and Jeromai both posted recently about how long it takes players to travel from exploration to exploitation. Nothing like as long the two weeks the new Flame and Frost dungeon is scheduled to hang around it seems.

My experience has been somewhat different. I first ventured inside the Molten Alliance's lair beneath the Shiverpeaks an hour or so after the Vigil breached the gate. No-one knew what to expect and we had no strats to follow, let alone exploits to, well, exploit. We barreled through the whole thing without single death until we reached the bosses. My ranger was never even Downed. The boss fight did see a lot of us lying on the ground, but everyone got revived as necessary and we beat both bosses on the first attempt.

Mrs Bhagpuss did the run on both of her accounts in PUGs during the first couple of days and had no more trouble than I did. That left us needing just one more trip to finish up Flame and Frost on my second account. Not wanting to leave it right to the end I took my Elementalist out to Wayfarers Foothills last night to get it done. Mrs Bhagpuss came along with her Necromancer to see what she could get out of the chest.

Having read the posts linked above, and given the relative cakewalk the dungeon had been for a totally unpracticed and inexperienced PUG on the opening day, I was expecting to get the whole thing out of the way in half an hour or so. Two hours later my Ele stumbled out into the bitter Shiverpeaks wind dressed in nothing but her underwear, surprised and profusely grateful to have gotten out at all.

How did it come to this?

Back to the beginning. There weren't many people waiting outside when we arrived. My plan was to reply to the first LFM request, join up and follow whoever took the lead, let them do the work while we trundled along at the back and did we were told. Only problem with that plan? No-one Looking For More. There weren't any parties there at all.

Rather than stand around complaining about it in the traditional fashion we joined the only other person LFP, a Thief, and started recruiting. The problem with recruiting, of course, is the people you recruit tend to think you're going to lead them. Having done the dungeon precisely once, and not having understood much of what was going on even then, I made the point strongly as we acquired each new member that I wasn't in charge and anyone who thought they knew what they were doing was welcome to put on the Captain's hat. No-one took me up on the offer.

We had five people in no time. So fast in fact that I was still recruiting and had to have it pointed out to me that there were already five of us. We stepped inside the Dungeon and before anyone could even speak to Rox one person announced his doorbell was ringing and another let on that he had to see to his dog. As the Thief observed, better then than when we were on the final boss.

Our thief, on the way to do something thiefy

That turned out to be the only such interruption in what would be a long and difficult adventure. Well, unless you count the Asura Engineer who pulled a vanishing trick after a particularly bad pull about half an hour in, which I don't, since he'd said only one word since we arrived and the Ranger was able to call in a charming Charr Guardian from his guild to replace him in less than a minute.

It all started so well, too. The ambush was dispatched almost derisevely. We loped along behind Rox and her burrowing machine burning down anything that got in our way. Mrs Bhagpuss's Sylvari necro, blithely ignoring Rox's warnings about hot coals, set herself on fire in her eagerness to get her hands on the Azurite, but her leaves were barely singed.

Everyone's on fire. That's probably not a good thing.

We rounded the end of the tunnel to confront the Champion Ember. He's supposed to be the hardest of the three possible spawns but we dampened his fires without too much trouble. On to the Weapons Test Room we marched. Someone ran straight into the Safe Corner and we all followed but after a couple of minutes the Thief decided it was against the famous thiefly code of honor to do anything sneaky so she ran out into the middle to dance with the flames. The rest of the Test passed with everyone running about and dodging back into the corner as amused them most. Gaiety and abandon prevailed.

She's usually so demure, too

Things began to take a turn for the worse in the Cryogenic Chamber. I hadn't even noticed this on my first run, we went through it so fast. This time: full party wipe. I was in Water attunement, wielding the healer's staff Memory of The Sky. Much good it did us. It was at this point that the Engineer bailed, although since he said nothing and we'd been doing very well until this first set-back maybe he just disconnected. We gave him the requisite couple of minutes then called the Charr Guardian off the benches.

He needed all his feline patience because from the moment he joined us things went rapidly downhill. I struggle to explain why, because bringing him on board made the party considerably stronger as a unit, especially since he took on the role of leader most efficiently, something we'd been muddling through without until then. Nonetheless we managed to wipe again half way through rescuing the prisoners and much of the time two or even three players were Down. Rox did a great job reviving us.

We made it to the Platform, battered and bruised but still in good spirit. A brief discussion ensued over which Boss to kill first. Everyone who had an opinion agreed on the Berserker. It was at this point that the Ranger let slip he'd done the dungeon about twenty times already, something he'd very wisely kept to himself until then.

Great grouping with you Rox...

I'll gloss over the agonies of the Big Fight. The first attempt left all of us dead and the Berserker still at 90% health. Second and third attempts didn't go a lot better, although there was some marginal evidence of improvement. For the fourth attempt we switched tactics and went for the Mole, who everyone called The Robot. Things went much better. I think we wiped first time but I'm not sure. It's all a bit of a blur to be honest. Either way, in short enough order The Robot went down and the cut scene played.

That left The Berserker. He was a nightmare. My only other experience of him was that he offered a tough fight, but my earlier group had run him around, worn him down and taken him out on the first attempt. This time it didn't go that way.

Each time we tried we ended up with three people Down and two trying to kite to victory. One time it was me and the Ranger and in what seemed like several hours we got Berserker Bill to 50%. I'm pleased I got that one good run even though it did us no good in the end because other than that I spent most of the time lying down. At least it made it look like I was trying.

...and you too Frostbite!

At this point I have to say once again that I must be very lucky with PUGs. Far from the social cesspools most people seem to dip into, my experience has largely been sunshine and rainbows. The dungeon took three or four times longer than it should, something of which the Ranger who'd done it twenty times must have been all too well-aware. Despite this and even though in the end he and his Guardian guildie ended up tag-teaming the Berserker from half health to dead while the rest of us lay around offering nothing more useful than "You can do it!" encouragement from the floor, everyone kept good their sense of humor throughout. There was never a moment when I thought anyone was going to call it quits. We'd started and we were damn well going to finish.

The key to victory was probably when the Guardian/Ranger duo finally gave up trying to get the rest of us back on our feet. Indeed, I would say that in both groups it was trying to revive others that made the fight seem more difficult than it really was. Without the need to stop and make targets of themselves the two were able to find a rhythm, playing the Berserker between them, wearing him down steadily until he finally fell over and we all stood up.

Wanting to show willing I grabbed a bomb and placed it and in a few seconds we were all crushed together in the lift. Rather embarrassing in my Ele's case, given what she wasn't wearing. The Guardian linked the Tonic recipe he'd gotten from the chest so I guess he was happy he came, which was just as well as he'd had to do most of the heavy lifting. We said our goodbyes and I made a hasty trip to the Repairer.

Everyone find something else to look at!

So that's most likely it for the Molten Weapons Facility as far as I'm concerned. Speed runs remain notional, exploits theoretical and my interest in running any kind of dungeon in GW2 is as it ever was, marginal. The one thing it did make me realize is how very much I miss playing a proper healer in a dedicated healing role, with real healing abilities that I can target as needed. Frankly, the whole thing would have gone better and been more enjoyable with an old-fashioned Healer/Tank combo. Under GW2's Trinity-free combat model, all too often we just end up trying to cobble something similar together out of poor-quality, second-rate parts. I'm ready for the Trinity to make a comeback, as it surely will, if not in this particular game.

Was it fun? In a way, although I'm not sure "fun" is the right word. Completing something you set out to do do even though it turns out to be a lot harder than you expected is satisfying. Getting it done in good company, with good humor and a few jokes is even better. In the end, though, I can think of a lot of more fun ways to have fun. I hope ANet can, too.

Pardon Me But Your Tail's On Fire - A Trip to The Facility With Braham and Rox: GW2

Should have known better than to try and play an MMO on launch day. Just as I was reducing the size of my new Dwarven Cleric's nostrils in the Neverwinter character creator the screen froze and that was that for two hours. Eventually a new launcher installed itself and with my cleric restored I tore through the tutorial only to find the city of Neverwinter rubberbanding like Bouncing Boy at a Flubber convention.

Enough of that. Back GW2, which was having its own issues. The Molten Alliance was understandably reluctant to open its doors to thousands of loot-hungry adventurers and for a while no-one could get into the new dungeon. That got fixed in fairly short order and while I was standing gawping at the entrance in Wayfarer's Foothills someone popped me a group invite so in I went.

Spoilers follow, although not many because most of the time I wasn't all that clear on what was going on, what with taking screenshots, trying to clear bag space for the torrent of trivial loot and trying not to be set on fire.

To open proceedings Rox operated a tunneling machine she must have twocced from the Iron Legion to dig through the mountain into the Supervillain Lair weapons facility. Along the way we passed a bunch of rooms with mining nodes inside, all of which gave up Mithril and the new Azurite gems. These are on a 24-hour per account timer but their placement is such that they could probably be reached duo or even solo, allowing for a few deaths along the way.

That's as far as you'll be going without a full group because the rest of the dungeon is, well it's a dungeon. It was designed by the Holiday Content team not the dungeon team and since we completed it with a PUG, none of whom had done it before or seemed to know anything at all about it, I'd say it's probably not the most challenging of dungeons but it was challenging enough for my tastes.

There's a longish bit where we got to stand in as targets for a demented Dredge weapons tester. That was fun but it went on too long. Once you've dodged a couple of waves of fire you've dodged them all, I say. After that there was another long part where we freed prisoners, all of whom trundled along behind us adding little to the proceedings.

We made our way deeper into The Facility while many, many Molten Alliance drones tried and failed to stop our progress along the winding but linear route. It would be hard, probably impossible, to take a wrong turning of more than a few paces. There are no turnings. There are a few mild jumps to be made. The drop looked terrifying but no-one in our party fell. I imagine you can just waypoint back.

We met a Champion who had a small chest...let me rephrase that... we fought a Champion and when we defeated him we got to loot a small chest nearby. I guess that makes him some kind of a sub-boss. Finally we reached a massive platform above another sheer drop into darkness. The Molten Alliance have no concept of health and safety. They might as well be Asura. Would it have hurt them to put up a guard rail?

 At this point two comedy Bosses appear. One's a cat with an electrified waste-paper bin on each paw and the other is a mole dressed as Iron Man. Both blown up to gargantuan proportions, of course. No explanation how this has been done is forthcoming. I guess they feed them well down there in the mine.

They might look like a pair of pantomime villains but these two were rough. Until this point I hadn't even been downed but they soon sorted that out. There's supposedly some mechanic where you switch from one to the other as they hit various percentages of their hit points but no-one paid any attention to that. We just hared round and round, dodging and rolling and frantically reviving teammates. Rox and Braham went down early and stayed there. Fat lot of help they were.

We got the mole down. Actually it was more like up. He had a jetpack and it must have malfunctioned as he died because he shot off like a punctured balloon. With him out the way you'd think it would have gotten easier but Wastepaper Bin Paws got a second wind and it must have taken at least twice as long to finish him off.

He crumpled up at last and we got the requisite Huge Chest, which had some odd loot inside. I got a 400 skill recipe for Mushroom Loaf and an Insignia to make a piece of the new armor. I have crafters that can use both so I was happy enough but there were mutinous growls from some of the party.

Even then we weren't done. We had to grab some explosive charges and do some more jumping across bottomless pits to place them, then we had to leg it to the lift in 30 seconds before the whole place blew. We all made it, even Braham and Rox and the freed miners.

We emerged on Diessa Plateau, stood around blinking in the daylight wondering what had happened, then said our "thanks for the group" formalities and disbanded. The dungeon is only here for about two weeks and I need to do it at least once more to complete the meta achievement for Flame and Frost on my other account. I might well also need to do it a time or two with Mrs Bhagpuss for hers. That shouldn't be too arduous. It was fun, although I wouldn't want to make a habit of it.

A visit to see Rox interrogating the Molten Alliance prisoners down in the Black Citadel pokey followed. I recommend talking to all of them, especially the Veteran Dredge. There is More To This Than Meets The Eye. My money's been on The Consortium turning out to be the master villains of the piece for a while now and the conversation I had with the mole just adds to my suspicions.

The evening wrapped up with a trip to Hoelbrak to see Braham mouth off at Knut Whitebear again. From the way the conversation went I'm guessing Cragstead will be staying as a permanent settlement. I hope so. It would be weird if it just disappeared as though it had never been, although come to think of it that's how it arrived.

So that's Flame and Frost. I wonder what comes next?

Rox Rocks : GW2

I was going to do an overview of GW2's March content drop Flame and Frost: The Razing but I don't really have enough time to do it justice and anyway Ravious and Jeromai got there before me.

In brief, then:

The Living Story finally came alive, almost literally with that full-motion cut-scene with Rytlock. That was a real surprise and a very welcome one. More of those, please. Also I took to new Charr character Rox right away. Just give me those huge green cat eyes for one of my Charrs now. I'll pay you good money.

The nursery instance was exactly the right degree of hard. I completed it without dying but I was downed a few times and it looked touch and go for a while. I hate having to restart storyline missions after a death because it completely destroys any narrative involvement I may have had with the story. If my character died, the story is over. Getting up and carrying on as if nothing happened just doesn't do it for me. So, win.

The Dead Letter Drop mission was first-rate. Having the locations listed in just the right amount of detail in an in-game mail worked wonderfully, especially since all the locations were actual map POIs. The content of the letters when found was mouth-wateringly mysterious. It seems there is a shadowy hand behind the Molten Alliance and it's not Suspect #1 Primordus. Color me intrigued.

WvW - The removal of culling is game-changing. The combination of that and the (really rather pointless but inevitably addictive) ranking system meant a complete change of behavior in WvW, which last night resembled nothing I have seen before. I loved it. Mrs Bhagpuss was not so keen. It will settle down over time to something more in the middle, I'm sure, but for now I'm going to enjoy it for what it is - chaotic, hysterical mayhem.

My favorite changes so far, though, are the adjustments to some of the Big Ticket Events. I love the new Bonus Chest system, which seems to have the twin virtues of heavily reducing the clustering at certain events, making them far more enjoyable, while actually increasing the amount of Rare loot I'm getting. I may only be able to get the Bonus Chest once per account, but but my characters can now get the normal chest as often as they can do the events and the normal chest has one or even two Rares in nearly every time! I hope this version sticks although I wouldn't be surprised to see it tweaked down again.

An unannounced but very welcome change was the rolling-out of the increased challenge levels tested last month to more big events. Claw of Jormag last night was vastly improved. I particularly admired the way that Ice Elementals had been persuaded to cast continual AEs on the "safe rock". So many downed players! There were a number of clever changes along these lines that I noticed and the whole thing was riotous fun again in the way it used to be back in September. Whether that will last, we will see. Players do have an almost limitless capacity to game themselves out of their own fun so I imagine new strats will soon be discovered to re-trivialize the event.

That's it. Can't stop. Got a Norn to help next.