Guild Wars 2 Archives - Page 28 of 32 - Tales of the Aggronaut

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August 16, 2017 by Belghast

As you know from the last several posts I have made on the subject… I have been playing a shocking amount of Guild Wars 2. I am still a little surprised myself considering how many years I just did not like this game at all. Something clicked in my brain and I am honestly happy that I stuck around long enough for that moment to happen. It’s weird just how much of what we like and dislike happens is related to the experiences we are ultimately comparing it to, and our present frame of mind. One of the things that I am finding shocking right now is just how damned active the game actually is. My frame of reference there has been mostly World of Warcraft, where not too long ago I spent some time on low level characters namely in the Ashenvale area. When pushing up my Orc Warrior I could go the entire night without seeing another single player. It legitimately felt like I was the only person in zone most of the time, and even if I made a trip to the Crossroads… it was a bit of a rarity that I actually encountered anyone there either. The weird part about this is the fact that I play on Argent Dawn and for the most part have every other role-playing server blended together… including the extremely high horde population Emerald Dawn server thanks to Alea Iacta Est and their presence.

Conversely while running around in Guild Wars 2 there is rarely a moment when I don’t have another player on screen. Last night I spent a good deal of time in Snowden Drifts which is a third tier zone in the Norn area, so not exactly a hub of the game. However each and every time I started to engage with an event or a hero challenge… moments after starting there were a slew of other players hanging out and doing the content as well. Now I gave the WoW reference not to somehow prove that game is dead… but just to highlight how vastly different the two games feel right now. Admittedly with World of Warcraft… the vast majority of the players are simply not leveling characters because if they are like me they have a stable full of post 100 characters in various states of completion. Guild Wars 2 has something else going for it though in that it serves to make every bit of content relevant by allowing the world to scale. Why this becomes interesting is the fact that if you do any major event… you have droves of players that show up to participate. The above event screenshot is from a random Ley-Line Anomaly from Gendarran Fields a level 25-35 area. By the time I saw the server message… and ported over there were already hundreds of players fighting the Anomaly. What makes this encounter so interesting is the fact that every so often it straight up kills a handful of players, and like clockwork there is always a chunk of players that stick around and rez the fallen before catching up. Thankfully in the case of this fight the mob drops these beacons that will allow you to leap ahead significant distances to try and keep from penalizing those community minded players.

One of the cool parts about Guild Wars 2 as well is the fact that at some point in the recent past they decided to open up the base game to everyone. Now you can pick up the “Standard Collection” for $49.99 which includes the base game, Heart of Thorns expansion and the as yet to be released Path of Fire expansion as well as 2 level 80 character boosts. That is pretty cool but if you are just wanting to dip your toes in to test the water, you can play the game for free with this registration link. In truth I suggest that option first given that it has legitimately taken me five years to reach a point where I am finding that I really truly do love this game. Now that free account has a bunch of restrictions on it, which thankfully they outline in a support article. Namely it seems like this is the standard protecting the environment MMO fare of limiting communication options. However there are a couple that are going to be annoying… namely the limit of 2 character slots and only 3 bag slots given that the game I feel has too small of bags in the first place. You are also limited to only the starter zones until level 10… but given you were probably going to stay there regardless that is not a big deal. Unlocking of Lion’s Arch around 35 is I believe about when you would normally go there through the story quests. Regardless if you decide you like the game you are probably going to at least pay the $50 to unlock the two expansions. The biggest annoyance to me would be Living Story Season 2 and 3 which are treated as separate purchases if you were not around to unlock the content when it was initially available. Now they go on sale periodically, however to purchase them outright would be around $16 per season. That said I have yet to complete Season 2 or in truth really get started in earnest on it, so that isn’t that big of a deal. The seasonal content helps you understand the lore of the world and the events that are going on around you. If you just want to smash things in the face with a hammer like I often do… this becomes optional content.

Regularly Playing: August Edition

August 9, 2017 by Belghast

It has been most of the summer since I last updated my sidebar, and a lot of things have changed. I figured it was high time that I true things up since we are just about to go into the school year, and starting to enter a pretty tightly packed release schedule for the rest of the year. For those unfamiliar with this feature, I functionally talk about the things that I have added… the things that are remaining… and the things that I am ultimately removing from regular rotation. I play a lot of games at any given time… and generally speaking the moment I update my sidebar… I have a wild mood swing game wise that leads me somewhere completely differently. So here goes nothing!

To Those Remaining

Final Fantasy XIV

Since I last posted there has been a lot of movement in this game, namely the release of a new expansion called Stormblood. As a result I swapped my Heavensward icon out for a Stormblood one. As far as my time in the game… I’ve reached 70 and 310+ gear on both my Warrior and my Samurai and have fallen off significantly in the amount of time I am actually playing. There is still plenty to be done, and I want to get back in the swing of playing on a regular basis, however lately I am deep within my own turtle session which means I tend to be favoring games where I don’t have much of a crowd. Still well within the realm of active games, just only logging in once or twice a day instead of devoting all of my time to it.

To The Returning and New

Guild Wars 2

This is the first time since picking up the game at launch that I can legitimately say that I am really enjoying myself while playing this game. For whatever reason it took five years to actually click with me, and now it is like discovering hidden treasure. I am attempting to do all the things and it is fitting the bill really well because I don’t have much infrastructure in the game currently. My current goal is reaching 100% in all of the old world zones, which I believe is one of the requirements for starting down the Legendary weapon rabbit hole. Another huge boon for my enjoyment of the game is the fact that there are now proper beards for non-norn characters.

Rift

To be honest since its release in 2011 it has never really been far off my radar. Crawling back into Rift is like wrapping myself in a warm blanket, because it is so familiar. In the past six years I’ve had highs and lows with the game, but I know that regardless I will always return and always be interested in whatever happens to be going on. Recently during my turtle mode game play in general, I have been spending a bit of time trying to catch up and hit the Prophecy of Ahnket level cap. I am also digging the tweaks I made to my default outfit. Rift in many ways feels like this snapshot of what everyone wanted in a game around its release, and in some ways it is still ahead of its time. In other ways though it feels like a time capsule to a time when MMO games were slower paced and more methodical. I still find it enjoyable and am always proud to feature it on my sidebar when I am playing.

Diablo 3

Another game that is never far off my radar is Diablo 3, and with us currently being in the thrall of another season… it is obviously occupying some sidebar territory. This is the first season to feature Necromancers and it has been hilarious to see literally bone spikes for days. I really don’t have a whole lot to talk about the game because if by now you don’t get my attraction you probably never will.

World of Warcraft

I have honestly all but stopped playing World of Warcraft, but I am keeping a space on my sidebar for it because of the RoboSquid Armada. This is effectively our weird brain chain of trying to run every dungeon and raid in World of Warcraft at level in minimal gear. Prior to the launch of Stormblood we had left off at Blackfathom Deeps and it seems like everyone is coalescing towards starting this up again. I am more than happy to do some madness with my baby monk.

To Those Departing

Star Wars the Old Republic

If I am being completely honest… I have to say I love what this game has become. I had this awesome time playing through the Shadows of Revan, Ziost and Fallen Empire content and then I sort of needed a break from deeply story driven gaming. It was also around about this time that we were ramping up for the release of Stormblood. At some point in the future when I need to completely dive into something wholly immersive… I will pick this back up and run through the Eternal Throne story line. I still poke my head in from time to time, but not enough to keep it on the sidebar.

Horizon Zero Dawn

This is one of those games that I really need to finish, but I have a feeling by the time I ultimately get back around to it… I will functionally need to restart the experience. This game is a casualty of too many other games coming out at the same time… and ultimately its playtime got eaten up by Mass Effect Andromeda that for whatever reason clicked way harder with me than Horizon did. I really enjoyed the game but I feel like I am going to have to be in the right frame of mind to actually return to it.

Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild

Another game that has fallen off the radar that I want to start back up at some point is Breath of the Wild. Two things happened to harm this experience… firstly a bunch of other stuff got released. Secondly… I picked up the switch and decided to restart the game. I still play this occasionally but not enough to really keep it hanging out on the right side of the screen.

Finally Invested

August 8, 2017 by Belghast

Sometimes I do not understand my own gaming whims. In theory I should be logging into Final Fantasy XIV every single night and working on collecting the last bits of stuff I need from Omega, or at the very least trying to cap the latest limited tier of bookrocks. However instead I am finding myself wandering around in a bunch of different games where I have little to no online gaming community. I’ve been in pretty deep turtle mode, and as a result I have been dodging other human beings left and right. I’ve talked about the “spoons” concept in the past, but right now it feels like every last spoon I have is getting used up before I hit the house in the evening. So what this means is a much higher percentage of passive activities like watching stuff from netflix, and a lower percentage of things like gaming that requires active participation. Effectively at this very moment I am managing two different teams at work… one of which my normal crew of developers and the second being a sort of response team to an issue that has been going on. This is eating up every last drop of my time and attention. There was one day last week where out of what turned into a 10 hour work day… I had 7 hours worth of meetings… followed by furious periods of attempting to get anything done. The glorious lie of being salaried is that in theory you get the same amount of money if you work 4 hours as if you work 40 hours… but what that means in reality is I have never worked less than 40 hours anywhere I have ever been. Most weeks I work significantly over because I wind up working through lunch. Needless to say all of this sustained madness leaves me pretty drained when it comes to interactions with other human beings. To make matters worse in a short amount of time we will be going through the upheaval that comes when my wife starts back to school for a new semester, and having to double down on my support infrastructure as she adjusts to having to leave the house every day.

I am not sure if it is due to my current state of mind… or if I have just slowly warmed to the game over time… but at some point I decided that Guild Wars 2 was apparently something awesome to be playing. I have a really tenuous past with this game that I won’t go into now because I have talked about it at length in the past on this blog. At some point however it started to feel decent to run around in this world and have all of these little micro objectives that I could be doing… without feeling like I was terribly tied to completing any of them. This week however I for some reason started working on the main story quest yet again… and almost five years after the launch of the game I managed to beat it and have officially entered the “living story” content proper. I cannot tell you how initially turned off I was on the concept of living story being this limited time thing. The fact that all I can see from Season 1 is a short montage of the events that happened in it still frustrates the shit out of me. However the fact that Season 2 and Season 3 are sitting there waiting on me actually gives me some reason to keep moving forward in the game. There is just a deluge of content available spread across a whole ton of games that I enjoy playing… and in order for me to keep being interested in a game it needs to sit there waiting on me. In truth I juggle a bunch of games at once, flipping to whatever game happens to feel good at that very moment. Recently I have been playing a sizable amount of Rift as well because it similarly is devoid of a social community that I have to worry about interacting with. I have a feeling that if this turtle keeps up… I will be revisiting SWTOR and Elder Scrolls Online as well… and in all of those cases I know there will be fresh content patiently waiting on me to return and enjoy it.

What has kept me engaged thus far in Guild Wars 2 was that the story picked up. For a long time I thought the main arc was a little nonsense, and it involved a lot of characters that I was not that deeply endeared to largely because they were all dicks to each other. However at some point the tide turned and I got engaged in the race to discover Orr and uncover its mysteries. This process kept pushing me into zones I had never seen before, which lead to me wandering around and exploring… which lead to me doing little side missions and objectives. What used to feel like an unsatisfying loop… suddenly felt extremely sticky as I slowly became invested in the game world. Now I legitimately can say I love this game, and it took a really long time to get there. For years I didn’t understand why people enjoyed it. There was a point last year where the AggroChat crew and I did some Fractals… at which point I thought I had understood where the core fun of the game was. However after spending some more time wandering around it feels like the core fun of the game… is that there is just so damned much stuff to be doing at any given time. All of it feels equally rewarding and equally likely to give you something that might be useful. The difference here is that I am effectively in the same gear I have been wearing for the last few years… but that the game has given me all sorts of horizontal leveling paths that do everything from increase my mobility… to simply increasing my luck chance. The best part of all of this is that a good deal is unlocked at an account level so regardless of which alt I decide to be playing… I am getting a good deal of the benefit. How I got around the old world without gliding is beyond me… and I have a feeling with the upcoming expansion once I get the ability to ride mounts I will have a similar feeling. Another major change is the fact that with the expansion character models… I can now have a proper beard as you can see me sporting in the first image… as well as a nifty eye scar. I am not exactly sure when the turtle will end, but in the meantime I am finding interesting ways to enjoy new worlds.

Top Five Lists Are Hard

August 2, 2017 by Belghast

I failed miserably at attempting to do a daily creative thing. Yesterday was an extremely crappy day on the work front, or at least one that drained every little bit of sanity out of me. By the time I got home I just wanted to vegetate on the sofa and play some games. With the announcement of the Guild Wars 2 Path of Fire expansion coming in September, this I am sure rekindled the fires for a lot of folks. For me personally… its particular un-directed style of roaming aimlessly yet still feeling like you accomplished something was a reasonable fit for the state of mind I happened to be in last night. It’s funny how my opinions of this game have changed significantly over the years. While I was in Alpha I was not a fan at all… and this is still the only Alpha program I purposefully resigned from. In Beta however I started to see some of the merits and played a little bit at launch, however that did not last extremely long. For years afterwards I was a bit at odds with the game and not really getting what everyone else was seeing in it. However about a year ago the AggroChat crew all returned and started doing some of the group content and more or less I began to see the merit. More recently I just find it an excellent source of bite sized entertainment… which is I think the intended goal all along. Of the original Guild Wars content, Nightfall was probably my favorite “expansion” that of course wasn’t actually an expansion. So since Path of Fire is going to be in that same area I am looking forward to this expansion way more than I did Heart of Thorns. I also find it extremely interesting that they are continuing to give horizontal progression… which on some level has traditionally bothered me… but also allows me to not feel left behind each time the game moves forward. The primary problem there is that I feel so far behind in the alternate progression paths that I will likely never actually catch up without a serious time investment.

Alright Twitter RT this with your top 5 video games of all time

— Westen (@epicgeezr) July 30, 2017

Yesterday a tweet was making its way across my twitterverse and it was interesting seeing everyone’s responses. The problem however is that I personally have a really hard time narrowing it down to a list of 50… let alone a list of 5. I made an effort to do so… then as soon as I posted it came up with half a dozen other alternates that potentially could have bounced the titles I listed from contention. When I look at an “of all time” list I tend to think of things in terms of long term replay-ability as well as the overall experience I had playing the game. Namely can I pick this title up today and still play it with the same level of joy that I had when I originally played the game. This means there is a significant number of titles from the PS1 and PS2 eras that are just dead to me without the introduction of a remaster or remake. We’ve experienced this several times in the AggroChat game club as we attempted to relive a title from the past only to find it doesn’t live up to our modern expectations for how a game should behave. So here is the list of games that I managed to whittle down to on impulse yesterday.

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

This is the only game that is pretty much universally always going to be my number one slot… until something dethrones it. I love everything about this game from the art style to the music to the level design. I have this title in the original PS1 release, Sega Saturn, PSP, PS3, PS Vita, and Xbox 360 versions. To the best of my knowledge this means I own it on pretty much every platform it has been released on… and truthfully I can happily keep playing this over and over. About once a year I seem to boot it up and play through it… and I am secretly hoping that the Switch gets a release at some point.

Fallout New Vegas

I waffled on this one a bit because I like ALL of the modern Fallout games… but personally I feel like New Vegas is the best version so far. It has everything I liked about Fallout 3 but includes a much better overarching storyline. At release this was rife with all manner of bugs… but over time through official and unofficial patches it has reached an extremely solid state and is one of those games I can still boot up at any time and return to happily.

Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past

This for me is always likely going to be the pinnacle of the Legend of Zelda franchise. Its Zelda at its most Zeldaish, and again this is one of those games that I can keep playing over and over. I remember this also being one of the first times I was completely shocked by a World 2 transition, in thinking I had almost beat the game… and then finding out that maybe I had finished a fifth of it. What I love the most is just how much stuff lies just slightly off the path and is not really required to beat the game.

Dragon Age: Origins

There are times I would like to say that I love the Dragon Age franchise… but in truth I really just love Dragon Age: Origins. I have significant problems with Dragon Age 2 and Inquisition, and I just can’t ever seem to get anywhere near as engaged as I did the first time. The thing is… it isn’t actually the first time because I have continued to successfully return to this world and play it over and over. The Grey Warden storyline beats every storyline they have come up with to date in every possible way… and I just want to keep reliving that character and experience. Additionally this was my Gateway drug into Mass Effect because if I did not love this game… I probably never would have given that franchise a second shot.

Mass Effect 2

Linked to the one above… Mass Effect 2 is the pinnacle of the series for me personally. It does the most things I want from Mass Effect which is honestly the “away mission” feel that you have in this game. In part I think Andromeda does a good job of recapturing this feeling, but the second game in the series will always hold a special place in my heart because it is the game that made me fall in love with this setting. I bounced pretty hard off of the PC port of Mass Effect because of the fairly cludgy interface, but after absolutely loving Dragon Age… and finding out that ME2 was going to be using that engine I gave the game a second shot. What I found was this rich world that ultimately caused me to go back and suffer through the first game so I could experience more of it. I love everything about this game from the recruitment of interesting characters, to ominous baddies… and even more ominous allies.

More Games

The moment I hit send I had a flood of other titles that really should have been included, and as a result I am just going to run through a few of these without delving into them. Regardless this is an extremely difficult exercise, because how do you condense over thirty five years of gaming into a single list of five.

Destiny
Diablo 3
Final Fantasy VI
Super Mario World
Knights of the Old Republic
Planescape Torment
Super Metroid
Phantasy Star IV
Guardian Heroes
Rivercity Ransom
Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo
Mortal Kombat II
World of Warcraft
Hellgate London
Wolfenstein New Order
Doom II
Minecraft
Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2
Thomas Was Alone

and honestly… the moment I hit post I will think of several dozen more than deserve to be on the list. Basically this is a really hard thing to do for me.