It was a very Guild Wars weekend and I am apparently in full swing with this game right now. I spent a bit of time Saturday afternoon running around with Ashgar on his Mesmer knocking out hero points in the Path of Fire areas. Up until this point I had yet to really play the class in the manner that I had originally planned… aka the Shadowknight/Deathknight equivalent called the Reaper. One of the odd things about Guild Wars 2 is that each expansion adds a new specialization… for those familiar with World of Warcraft, think of this as a Talent tree.
With this also comes the ability to unlock a new weapon type that the class previously did not have access to, for example Reaper gives Necromancer access to the Greatsword and with the most recent expansion Harbinger gives access to Pistol. However to unlock a new specialization it takes the collection of 250 hero points… which requires a bunch of running around and completing specific mini activities. At the time of the release of Path of Fire there were a grand total of 904 available in the world so more than enough to get both of the Elite specializations at that time. With the release of Cantha and End of Dragons there are even more Hero Points up for grabs. My focus however has been to unlock Reaper the Elite Specialization that shipped with Heart of Thorns.
Speaking of Heart of Thorns… it only took me almost seven years to do it but I have finally finished that content. When I say “Finished” I mean the story because there are still so many things that I have yet to unlock from those zones. I have to say there was one part that I barely made it through. Growing up I never had any issues with motion sickness and I could happy draw or read in the car while zooming down the road. However there is something that games specifically do that completely triggers a motion sickness in me that is brutal. I first experienced it in Warframe and in Heart of Thorns there is this rotating corkscrew plant tower that you have to climb and fight things as you go up… and the constant spinning and motion of the camera… I barely made it up in one piece. The only other real complaint that I had is that the Mordermoth fight was roughly three times longer than it needed to be.
In other news I am one step away from my Warclaw mount in World Vs World, and quite honestly the only thing remaining is just to push through a lot of reward tiers and spend 8 gold. When we last talked about this I think I was down to just missing a Keep capture and the item that you get at the end of the reward track. Yesterday I managed to get in with a rolling group of blues lead by a commander that saw us take a ton of objectives.
This nonsense friends is roughly fifteen siege golems being piloted through the canal system to “sneak up” on the enemy. It was a purely nonsense sight to behold but we managed to take the two big keeps on this map with this parade of magitech glory. By following other players I am starting to learn the ropes of how to navigate the maps efficiently. I never would have thought to swim my way to the final objective, but sure enough there is a connecting series of waterways that gets you there rather quickly. I have to say after having experienced a bunch of different versions of this… I greatly prefer the underwater combat of Guild Wars 2 because it just works flawlessly. I wish we could use our REAL weapons while underwater but I understand WHY we can’t.
I ended up wasting a fair amount of time on Saturday and Sunday working on the personal story missions… only to realize that I can’t actually get anything of value through the quest sequence. I did however get a wee bit misty when I got to the quests involving “old” Lion’s Arch. I will admit that I greatly prefer the modern layout of that city, but there was something cool about the way it looked before. Lion’s Arch now feels like a proper capital city but previously it absolutely felt like the smugglers den that I think it was originally intended to be. With that… you have pretty much my weekend in gaming. I did not expect to be spending all of it in Guild Wars 2, but I guess the heart wants what the heart wants.
In other news I am starting to sift through the photos I took years ago, but never did much of anything with. My hope is that as it warms up I will get out again and start doing some photo shoots. I am not sure WHY something has triggered a desire to do this again, but whatever the case I am going with it. In order to support this nonsense I decided to spin up an Instagram account devoted to this project. My goal with “Bel’s Confused Fotomat” is to post something each day. I have a mountain of images that I am working through, but in theory new stuff should start flowing in as well. For those of a certain age they will probably recognize the Fotomat concept, but for those who are a bit younger or did not have one in their area.
Fotomat was a chain of film development places… that set up as tiny drive through businesses in parking lots. I remember as a kid being completely enthralled with the concept and wondering how they did all of the development work in such a tiny building. In truth all the “booth” had was a filing system for film and a cashier and everything else got trucked in every night from a professional film development shop. My child brain however imagined an web of pneumatic tubes and a vast underground vault where all of the film was stored and the development processes took place. As with so many things as an Adult you find out the truth is way less interesting than our imagination.