A Sense of Scale : GW2

Everything in Heart of Thorns is overgrown, overblown, overloaded. The heights are higher, the depths deeper, the undergrowth thicker, the monsters bigger than anywhere else in Tyria.

And, let's face it, Asura aren't big to begin with. We have trouble climbing the steps in Hoelbrak. Of course, so do the Norn, but only because they're always drunk.

Then again, whoever built these cities, the ruined and the golden alike, worked on a scale that even a Norn would balk at. If it wasn't for the endless stairways this would be a fine place for a stilt-walkers' convention. They'd never have to duck going through an archway, that's for sure.

This is country that demands heft in all things. No wonder the cities are the way they are. The trees, the cliffs, the canyons, you could hardly put up a bungalow and call it home. Shhh. Don't mention Bongo. We're not talking about him. Whoever he is.

Even Rata Novus is oversized for an Asura settlement. Then again, so is Rata Sum. It's Dwarven Architect Syndrome all over again.

In the end all you can do is embrace, go with the flow, cast yourself to the winds and trust them to bear you up. And if they don't, well, if an Asura falls in the jungle, who's going to hear?

Chin up. It's not like the Charr have it so much better. Although they do have that always landing on their feet thing going. I wonder how that's working out for them?

Ah well, at least we're not Sylvari. That's a thought to keeps you warm at night. Sweet dreams.

She's Filled With Secrets : GW2

Lion's Arch continues to fascinate. There's a tour you can take but with amazing timing I joined the group just as the guide went on her break. She sent us all through the portal to Gendarran Fields and said she'd meet us on the other side. Then she stalked off in the opposite direction.

We all waited by the bridge for a few minutes. Then I took matters into my own hands. I decided to make up a tour of my own. Well, not entirely my own. While I was exploring I also filled out the formal Map Completion requirements. Map completion was always exploring by numbers but with the addition of the onscreen pointers now it's more like one of those "nature trails" beloved of infant school teachers the world over.

If I was any kind of efficient I'd have taken the trouble to pick up a rifle from Turl Sharptooth and potted a few Karka along the way. Mrs Bhagpuss has already bagged Princess for both of her accounts and I haven't even started. Must get on that before I drown in dragonite.

Reason I didn't bother with the rifle this time is that it'll be no trouble to go round again. Any reason to spend more time in this rich and strange city is welcome. There's so much to see and hear, so much to do, so many secrets to discover.

Oh yes, secrets. Lion's Arch is full of them. Sya has one. To be honest, it's not much of a secret, not any more. There's a twelve-page thread about it on the forums for one thing. If you happen on her, where she stands near Fort Mariner, she'll gladly tell you about it, if you ask.

Her secret. Sya used to have another name. She's changed. And more than just her name. She's not someone I know well, more an acquaintance, really. We met at the refugee camp a while back. He was Symon back then.

Wait, she tells it better than I can:

Tyria is becoming a new kind of world. Maybe having a clear and undeniable enemy helps us to focus on what's important. (The elder dragons. Remember? Big, lizardy, lots of teeth...) Makes it easier to understand what matters and what really doesn't. To make choices. Perhaps that's it.

Old Tyria was big on lines you wouldn't want to cross. Charrs and humans, that was one. Remember the big deal when Rytlock and Logan even got as far as not trying to kill each other on sight? That was progress, then. Now we have Jordyn and Leyah and their Asura Guardian, blurring all the lines.

Of course, those two always had vision. Let me remind you what Leyah told me when we bumped into each other a while back. She said "I'm teaching Jordyn how to be a soldier. She's going to be in my warband, and we're gonna be Ash legion, 'cause we're spooky".

I said I didn't think humans could be in a Legion but she already had that all worked out. She told me "They couldn't be before, but me and Jordyn are gonna change that when we're tribunes. Probably in a couple of years or so."

Grammar is not a high priority in the Fahrar curriculum

The way things are going will it even take that long? Look at Snikk and Scratch. Best friends forever, when they should be natural enemies, or at least experimenter and experiment. All over Lion's Arch you can find multi-racial groups of children at play. Human children and charr cubs seem to have a mutual attraction that rivals the bro-bonding of adult Charr and Norn. Or maybe those are Norn children. Whatever. When these kids grow up everything will change.

Already, though, Tyria in general, Lion's Arch in particular, looks to be in the vanguard of social change. Gender reassignment and sexual orientation (Hi, Jory! Hi, Kas!), racial harmony and who knows what else. It's heartening for sure. But let's not paint too bright a picture. There's a worm in the apple.

I ran into Inspector Lizzi on the beach. She'd found something. Something very bad. The twisted corpse of a sylvari on the sand. I stopped to see if I could help. What she told me brought a bitter chill to the bright day.

Blood speaks to blood as the sap runs thin. There will be an accounting.

Right now, Lion's Arch is at peace, or so it seems. Enjoy it while you can. It won't last. It never does. Remember, we all stand together or we fall.

The Past Is A Different Country: GW2

Ravious has a very positive post up about the latest Living Story installment, Seeds of Nightmare. I'm not quite as impressed as all that but I liked it too. Well, what there was of it.

Adrian observed in the comments yesterday " It was shorter than the last one and not a whole lot happens." That about does it. I would guess there's maybe 10-15 minutes of dialog and cut scenes. There is a lot of really quite intriguing back-story and lore but the main storyline comes to a dead stop.

I don't think it's a spoiler to say that after completing the entire episode I have no more idea why Caithe took Glint's egg, where she went with it or what she might be about to do next than I had two weeks ago, when she ran off with the dam' thing in the first place. I do, however, know a lot more than I did about the Sylvari in general and several of that race's featured players in particular. If I was asked to sum up what I now know I think something along the lines of "they're a race of sociopaths" would probably cover it.

Take my word for it - you don't want to. Not this lot.

Of course, that description fits the Asura pretty tightly too. It's hard to say which sequence in the current chapter is the more unpleasant - the Inquest and their vivisection lab for sentient races or the Sylvari runaway-slave-recovery/ethnic cleansing squad. Either would sit a lot more happily against the relentless grimdark of The Secret World than the watercolor wash and neon rainbow backdrop of Tyria.

Safe to say there aren't a lot of laughs in this episode. The only one of either Destiny's Edge or the Biconics to make an appearance is Marjory and she's never a barrel of laughs at the best of times. Even less so now she's carrying her dead sister in the form of a six-foot sword and brooding on fantasies of revenge.

She and your character visit The Pale Tree, who is not best pleased when she learns you let Caithe get away with the egg. She's positively snappy in fact. She reminded me of a mother who just found out her son "forgot" to deliver a note from school. I never trusted her anyway and not one thing I have heard her say thus far gives me any reason to change my mind.

Pwincess! Come back from the edge!

After that it's the usual traipsing about to find this or that location, before entering an instance, where you have some fights. The McGuffin this time around is a handful of Memory Seeds that let you relive significant events in Caithe's past, the idea being that you might thereby get some handle on her future, viz and to wit where she went with the egg. Well I can't say that worked for me. Don't have a clue.

The traveling is done as yourself with Marjory tagging along. There's a nice new widget that uses a "...warm, warmer, now you're getting cold..." routine to locate the exact spot and then it's into Caithe's memories you go. Marjory stays outside, presumably guarding your inert body, while you get to spin and leap about in the form of Caithe.

Caithe is a thief. I have a level 80 Thief but I rarely play her. Leveling up I pretty much used the bow and spammed Heartseeker and that was it. Shadow Refuge if that didn't work. Whether Caithe's skills bear any resemblance to a player-thief's I can't say, partly out of ignorance and partly because I didn't bother to examine them. I followed the tried and tested method of spamming everything all the time whenever it wasn't on cooldown, dodge included.

Look, I've told you once. You'll be going in the bag if this carries on.

This had me throwing myself around like Batroc ze Leaper on amphetamines but it seemed to get the job done. I died once, thereby discovering Caithe has no downed state and the health of her enemies resets so I made sure not to die again, which wasn't difficult. Normally I'd say I'd rather play my own character but frankly anything that gets these obligatory fight sequences over faster is worth a try.

There's a bug in the Inquest Lab section where Caithe can get stuck in perma-stealth, meaning she can't fight or interact with objects - game over, start the instance again in other words. That happened to me but luckily Faolain was already in combat so I just sat back and watched while she cleared the room. She's unkillable but she has the DPS of an elderly armadillo so it took a while.

Oh yes, Faolain. Wherever you go in Caithe's head Faolain is sure to be there. She's Caithe's quondam lover and current leader of The Nightmare Court, a bunch of bona fide, full-on psychopaths who broke away from The Pale Tree a couple of decades ago so they could be free to act like emo teenagers. And kill people. Most of this chapter is effectively their origin story.

Canach shows his softer side. I think he's over that now.

It's also Canach's origin story and Trahearne's origin story. It's like a Secret Origins Annual! They come out of things about the opposite of what I'd have guessed. Trahearne acts like a stubborn, bigoted ass while Canach is empathic and sympathetic. I wondered if someone swapped a Post-It on someone else's desk back in the writers' room. Can't deny I found it intriguing though.

On it goes like that. Lore, backstory, characterization, no plot progression. Having riled up The Fans throughout Season One by seemingly turning their faces against anything that happened in Tyria prior to 2012 Earth Time, the writers appear to have done a one-eighty and decided the past is where it's at. Or The Fans are where the money comes from and long-term future of the game, if it's going to have one, has to be curated to their satisfaction. Both, probably.

I played a bit of Guild Wars. Origins around launch, Eye of The North and Origins again much later, when I was warming up for GW2. A smattering of the rest - I own all the expansions. I am no kind of GW lore buff though. About all I know of Abaddon or The White Mantle are the names. Consequently I am beginning to feel slightly at sea. I have to wonder how appealing this stuff is to the GW2 players who only know GW2.

Pwincess! Pwincess! I'm sorry I yelled at you. Oh, where did she go?

I imagine that's the demographic that wasn't quite so gosh-wow over the books in the Durmand Priory Library; the players who'd quite like the story to be more about the big dragon we're fighting now and less about things that happened twenty years ago. There are rumblings of dissatisfaction on the forum to this effect although that proves nothing. Rumblings of dissatisfaction is the forum.

It'll all lead somewhere. Most probably to an expansion in the Spring or early Summer. All will no doubt be forgiven and forgotten then. Meanwhile we'll take our story in drip-feed form and like it. It's not like we have a choice.

What's more, the story formed only the most minor part of this update. There was a big revamp of the PvP game, a small addition to the overland map and a humungous new jumping puzzle. To no-one's surprise more than my own it's the jumping puzzle that looks like being the highlight. It may well be getting its own post here, when I have time to explore it further. I spent a very enjoyable hour there today, mostly taking screenshots of my Charr Ranger in heroic poses (see above).

Charr ranger is categorically the worst class/race combo for jumping puzzles so next time I'll be taking an Asura. That'll mean a lot of screenshots looking up. As for that story about a big dragon...next year for that I guess. Hope he's the patient type of dragon.

Of Cabbage Elves and Kings: GW2

The briefest of first impressions, dashed off as I eat my breakfast before going to work, based on a couple of hours play last night.

Originally I didn't plan to play this Beta Weekend at all. I am deep in The Secret World and loving it despite, or even because of its flaws. The first City of Steam alpha begins today and my alpha key is safely activated. I don't have the time or enthusiasm for a final day and a half in a beta for an MMO that I will be playing full-time live in just over a month.

Curiosity, of course, got the better of me. The compromise I made was to play both a race and class that I have absolutely no intention of playing at launch, if ever. Thus my Sylvari Thief was born hatched whatever.

Noble. So noble.

I know nothing of the Sylvari other than what I have picked up around the peripheries of my reading on other matters pertaining to Guild Wars 2. My impression was that they are elves by another name. After spending a couple of hours in their starting area this impression has changed not a jot, merely hardened to a conviction.

They look elvish. Elven. Like elves. They talk like elves. Wood elves, unsurprisingly. There is talk of a Nightmare Court so Dark Elves lurk in the backstory. No doubt there will be nobles somewhere along the line and we'll have High Elves. You'd like to think the whole being a plant thing would preclude half-elves but I wouldn't put anything past the Asura.

Your correspondent, centre, falling.

The short intro takes place in  a dream. Scratch that. The short intro takes place in The Dream. Capitalization obligatory. It was a dream with about a thousand milling first level cabbage elves in, I died twice before I could even get to the Big Wood Dragon and then I was in Tyria. It might make sense when the server isn't full to bursting and half of all people playing didn't just pick a fresh cabbage.

Only laugh I had all night

Then I was in The Nursery in Greater Faydark. Well, it was either there or one of several Korean F2Ps I've uninstalled over the years. Everything was extremely green and all the NPCs talked like care assistants in a Home For The Bewildered. Or residents.

I followed my Personal Story for a few minutes and ended up in an instance at level three, inevitably seeking the Secret Salve of the Bad Race that the Elven Sylvari Wise One needed to create A Cure for the Terrible Poisoning of an Innocent. I think it's plotline #4 in Questing For Dummies.

Things did improve when I got a gun

There I met The Troll King. He was Level Five and you have to be pretty damn hard to hold the crown at a level like that. He duly kicked my stalk and I logged out in low dudgeon and spent the rest of the evening back in The Secret World, pleased at least to have all my prejudices confirmed.

On a much more positive and less snide note, I did push past the starting area and the Sylvari lands as they open out look far more intriguing, explorable and interesting. And Mrs Bhagpuss sagely made an Asura and had a great evening, having to be dragged off the computer after midnight as she also has work today. If I'd made an Asura this post would have taken a very different tone, I'm sure.