Blog Archives
[GW2] Tasks
It’s been 2-3 weeks since I’ve started playing Guild Wars 2 again. So… what am I doing?
Thus far, I have been really leaning into the current Fractal event. Which, to be fair, is primarily due to the FOMO elements. The introduction of the new Legendary gloves you can get for running Quickplay versions of the early Fractals will be sticking around, but there’s another “reward track” that grants two Bag space slots, a 20-slot bag, and a Legendary starter kit that will be going away on October 7th. Theoretically, you can still grind most/all of it by the time this post goes Live, but I have enjoyed gaining some extra progress – via Daily/Weekly achievement resets – by spacing things out.
There is probably some debate to be had as to whether adding the Quickplay feature to Fractals will lead to more players doing Fractals after the event ends. Honestly… maybe? It certainly has demystified the game mode to an extent, as my normal M.O. for this sort of group content would be to watch YouTube videos to understand all the mechanics before even stepping inside. That sort of thing is not particularly viable when Quickplay has like 10ish options randomly picked for you. Of course, everything has been toned way down for the game mode, so you get the gist after seeing the maps several times even if you aren’t reading text (since everyone is Go-Go-Go).
Another piece of “content” I have very much enjoyed is the Wizard’s Vault. This is a rework of the Daily Achievements (read: daily quests) system with a fancy new interface and currency called Astral Acclaim. It was very annoying at first, as it had a mixture of PvE and PvP objectives, but once I figured out that you can uncheck the PvP box and get all PvE-based objectives, everything was grand. You have both Daily and Weekly tabs you can work on, and then you have a large menu of rewards to choose from that eventually reset every quarter or whatever. So, for example, you can choose to spend Astral Acclaim on certain cosmetics, or a Legendary starter kit, or a bag containing 1g (x90), or your choice of an Ascended Weapon, and so on. The Weekly tab requires six objectives to get the big bonus chest, but there are eight total options so you even have some choice to skip ones you find annoying.
The one thing I haven’t done is purchase any expansion content. For one thing, Visions of Eternity is right around the corner (Oct 28). While $25 is not onerous for an MMO expansion, purchasing three of them back-to-back is another matter. Plus, you know how I am: why pay full price when the expansions were literally on sale at the beginning of the month? I missed that boat, but I’m assuming there will be another sale around launch day. Of course, waiting is always kind of risky, as I could easily come to my senses and start playing other things again.
[Fake Edit] Steam Autumn sale is on, and now those two expansions are $17.50 and $19.99. Huzzah!
The other thing I haven’t (yet) started in on are unlocking Legendaries. In pretty much every guide out there, the recommendation is for players to not do weapon or armor Legendaries first, but instead go for accessories (rings, amulet, etc). This makes some sense, as accessories apply to every character you ever make, whereas armor is broken up into weight classes (can’t use Light Armor Legendary on your Thief). Weapon Legendaries can apply to multiple characters… but not if they are off-meta or off-spec. Well, this is GW2, so meta probably doesn’t really matter all that much.
Regardless, the “problem” is that I have effectively decked out all my alts in Ascended accessories already. It’s been like seven years since this post, but farming Winterberries an unholy amount of times will get you most everything you need. Berserker stats won’t help Viper builds, but as long as you alternate what you get your alts, you can usually just shuffle the accessories around each time balance patches change the math. Grinding out Vision or Aurora or whatever may provide a little QoL bump, but it will not actually improve any stats. So, dilemma.
For now, I will continue what I’m doing for as long as it remains fun. Which it is. For now. Although, I came across this “resolution” while looking up past GW2 posts, and… yeah. We’ll see.
What Do You Get with GW2 Expansions?
The question that Google failed to (succinctly) answer for me is this: what do I actually get with the three latest Guild Wars 2 mini-expansions? You know, aside from the story and everything. What unlocks? Are there new Legendaries? If I had to pick which to get first, or maybe only one at all, what would the biggest bang for my buck be?
Since I had to look this stuff up for myself, I figure I may as well write it down. Note: all expansions retail at $25 and come with a Shared Inventory Slot plus level 80 boost. And, you know, story content.
Secrets of the Obscure
- Mastery to unlock weapons for use regardless of spec (Scourge can use pistol from Harbinger, etc)
- New open-world focused Legendary Armor set
- Faster Skyscale mount unlock, plus additional abilities
- Exclusive Relics that are often Best-in-slot (Relic of the Fractal)
Janthir Wilds
- Introduces land-based Spear as a new option for all classes (Best-in-slot for some meta builds)
- New Legendary Spear and Backpack
- Homestead is your own private customizable house
- Warclaw mount gets a lot more functionality (double-jumps and such)
- Exclusive Relics that can be Best-in-slot (Relic of the Claw)
Visions of Eternity
- One new Elite spec for each class (nine total)
- Skimmer mount gets a lot more functionality
- New homestead map (if you own Janthir Wilds)
- “New system updates will make raids easier to access” (Quickplay?)
- Note: not yet out at the time of this post
Hopefully helpful to Googlers down the road.
GW2 Too
It has been about 2.5 years since I last touched Guild Wars 2 (GW2). At that time, I had been puttering around, completing daily quests to net the equivalent of $0.20/day, and basically stewing in my own cognitive dissonance. What broke me out of the cycle was the then-pending release of Secrets of the Obscure expansion. Even though GW2 is one of the few MMOs out there that doesn’t obsolete content once expansions come out, just knowing that everyone else would be doing all the cool stuff while you’re stuck gathering Flax or whatever sucks. On the other hand, I didn’t necessary want to pay $30 for more GW2, so I took that as a sign to uninstall and do something else.
And so I did. Another expansion came out called Janthir Wilds, and I let that one pass me by too. It even featured the ability to have a decorative house, introduced a spear weapon for every class, and so on. Neat. Have fun with that.
There is even yet another expansion coming out in October called Visions of Eternity. I think there are even new Elite specs this time around. Haven’t really looked into too far.
So why am I writing about GW2, and in fact have reinstalled the game? They finally introduced LFD.
It’s technically a beta feature, but it’s called Quickplay, and it’s the same automated group finder feature from WoW circa 16 years ago. Press button, get an instant 5-man squad and teleport right next to them. Right now, it is pointing towards even-easier versions of T1 Fractals, but presumably it will be expanded in the future to actual dungeons, perhaps Strikes, maybe raids? Moreover, ArenaNet has erected an extremely generous set of Achievements surrounding spam-queueing T1 Fractals for the next several weeks, resulting in extra bag slots, a Legendary glove (!!), and other such goodies.
As dumb as it sounds, yeah, reading about Quickplay (and the rewards, obviously) is what pushed me over the edge into downloading GW2 again.
…sorta. Honestly, I had also reached a point where I realized that I was logging into No Man’s Sky just because I couldn’t think of a better game to play for those “don’t want to commit to 1+ hour game sessions” moments. If I’m not committing to something, why not not commit to something that could possibly be relevant in the future? Then again, Guild Wars 3 is going to be a thing at some point, rendering everything moot. Also, heat death of the universe.
Anyway, bottom line, I’ve been playing GW2 a lot the past few days.
Legendary Grind
I continue to play Guild Wars 2.
One of the ancillary goals I have within the game is unlocking a Legendary weapon. These weapons are not actually more powerful than Ascended weapons (stats are the same), but they feature some nice quality of life features. Specifically, their stats can be switched any time outside of combat and they are basically unlocked on all your characters at the same time. Regular Ascended weapons can have their stats switched by sacrificing some items, and they are not soulbound, so technically they can be swapped around on your characters as well. So it’s really about the ultimate convenience.
Legendary weapons in GW2 are part of a monstrously insane grind, however.
I was looking at “Gen-3” Legendary weapons tonight, which are those introduced in the End of Dragons expansion. When you purchase the expansion, you get a free “precursor” weapon, which is the first hit of crack to start you on the downward spiral. I originally chose the Axe, so let’s look at that path. To create the Legendary, you need the following:
- Gift of Aurene’s Rending
- Dragon’s Rending (the precursor)
- Gift of Jade Mastery
- Draconic Tribute
Oh, hey, only three items! That should be easy, right?! No. Not at all.
Starting from the top, Gift of Aurene’s Rending:
Aside from Mystic Runestones, which are purchased at 1g apiece from a vendor, the other three items have, you guessed it, four additional components each. The Poem on Axes requires 10 Tales of Adventure, 10 Lamplighter Badges, and two other minor items of no particular consequence. Completing the expansion storyline gives you 14 Tales of Adventure, so technically that’s not a stretch until you want to make another Gen-3 Legendary. The Lamplighter Badges though, require you to achieve map completion on Cantha maps, e.g. explore the entire map and unlocking all the points of interest, Vistas, and so on. You can get 1 per map, so you technically either have to do complete map exploration on more than one character, or repeat an achievement that has you lighting lamps all over the place. All of this is not technically difficult, especially if you have a Skyscale mount so you can fly around, but it is time-consuming.
The Gift of Research… sorry, did you think we were onto a different step? The Gift of Research is straightforward in that you need 3.75g of vendor mats, 250 Essence of Luck, and 500 Hydrocatalytic Reagents which themselves requires 2500 Research Note currency. The Essence of Luck comes from disenchanting gear which you accumulate in abundance; training one character as an Artificer will allow you to combine lower-level Luck into the needed type pretty easily. Research Notes comes from disenchanting crafted items in a way that doesn’t produce Luck, so this step is really all about destroying stuff. There are websites out there that will give you up-to-date info on the cheapest items to craft/buy and destroy for Notes.
Gift of the Mist. This one is where I start shaking my head a bit. This one requires Gift of Glory, Gift of Battle, Gift of War, and Cube of Stabilized Dark Energy. Glory requires 250 currency from PvP, Battle comes from the very end of a WvW Reward Track, War comes in small amounts from WvW Reward Tracks, and the Cube is crafted from two materials gained from salvaging Ascended gear (most efficiently from Fractal content). So, basically, this is the “go do all the other bits of game” step.
Hey, since we already have the precursor, we’re halfway (?) there!
Gift of Jade Mastery has four components.
The Bloodstone Shard costs 200 Spirit Shards, which is one of those currencies you either have thousands of or are starved for, depending on how long you’ve (passively) played GW2. Suffice it to say, you cannot directly purchase them, and must earn them via gaining XP at max level, doing three daily quests, and so on. Gift of Cantha is no big deal, as it requires four items you get from map completion, which you were doing anyway. Antique Summoning Stones, aka ASS, is a currency you can purchase 5 of each week, and earn from doing meta events. Realistically, you are probably buying 3-4 a week unless you are running Strike Missions.
Gift of the Dragon Empire. Oh boy. First is 100 Jade Runestones, which come from special chests in the expansion maps. There used to be an exploit of sorts that allowed you to get one per character parked at the end of a jumping puzzle, but that was recently nerfed and the price has skyrocketed as a result. I have toons parked around the other easiest chests, and I can get 5/day for about 20 seconds of work. Next is 200 Chunks of Pure Jade, which you are technically time-gated on, but it’s as easy as mining ore nodes in one of the maps over the course of three days. Next is 100 Chunks of Ancient Ambergris and this comes from fishing. You can get 1/day from turning in a specific fish, 5/day from turning in Flawless Fish Fillets, and occasionally get them from the fish themselves. Last is Blessing of the Jade Empress x5, which is an item that costs 500 Imperial Favor apiece, a currency you get from completing Events and such around the expansion. This technically isn’t hard to accumulate, but cannot be fast-tracked and requires time on the ground.
Alright, we’re in the final stretch! Draconic Tribute requires:
For the most part, this is the “random bullshit, go!” step. Mystic Clovers are typically acquired 7 at a time at the end of a 28-day daily login reward cycle. You can gamble for them too, or use some more expense currencies to purchase them in limited quantities each week. Gen-1 and Gen-2 Legendaries require 77 of them instead, so Gen-3 is a bit more forgiving in that. Amalgamated Draconic Lodestone can randomly be acquired from a variety of sources, or crafted from components that are randomly acquired. It can also be purchased directly (3/week) using Super Adventure Box currency, which is a once per year festival currently going on. It takes me about 30ish minutes each day to earn about half the required amount of currency. Finally, you have Condensed Might and Magic, which are themselves made up of four Gifts which correspond to the generic loot you may have been accumulating your entire GW2 career, e.g. Fangs, Totems, Scales, etc.
After all of that grind, throw everything into the Mystic Forge and you get your Legendary!
…
…
…or just straight-up buy the Legendary from the AH. The Axe is currently being sold for 2550g. The price conversion of gems to gold changes daily, but right now it’s approximately 35g per 100 gems. So that’s 7285 gems or roughly… $91. Yep. $91.
Granted, you can also farm 2550g through the course of the game and just buy it that way without even playing the expansion or doing anything special. Or you can purchase the majority of the necessary crafting items and skip certain sections of the grind. Indeed, it is the only way some of those 5/week limited items are at all reasonable. Plus, this site is showing how you can technically make almost 802g profit by crafting the Legendary Axe with materials you purchased from the AH. Options!
Nevertheless, I find it difficult to get over the $91 thing. Guild Wars 2 is about finding your own goals, as the Exotic Gear you got 10 years ago is still good enough for raiding today. Crafting Legendaries certainly feels like one of those things you can steadily chip away at as a form of content that gets you out in the world playing with other people.
Or you can just open your wallet.
Goal Wars 2, pt 2023
Yep, still playing Guild Wars 2. About 3 months ago, my goals were:
Play through Icebrood Saga contentPlay through End of Dragons contentTry some of the new Elite specsWork towards completing “Return of” achievements for free LegendaryWork towards unlocking Skyscale mount- Work towards unlocking some Legendary gear
As you can see, I have knocked damn near everything off my list.
ArenaNet introducing the “Return of” achievements with a “free” Legendary amulet carrot at the end (plus Legendary weapon precusor in the middle) has to be one of the most genius marketing moves I have seen an MMO developer take. With the stroke of… uh, some achievement code, they instantly made damn near their entire catalog of Living World content relevant again. The immediate impact was to give the general population something to do before the release of the End of Dragons expansion. But for someone like me, it also generated a means of incremental, meaningful progress that weren’t daily quests.
Plus, it kinda forced me to shell out $10 buying the Living World episodes I missed over the years.
The question is “what now?” I have completed End of Dragons content – and the original story conclusion, 10 years late – so there isn’t really anything left in the plot department. Ostensibly, my goals included unlocking some additional Legendary gear. The options I have been looking at include:
- Weapon (Axe)
- Backpiece (PvP)
- Accessory (Vision)
- Accessory (Aurora)
Of those, the Backpiece has been an interesting consideration. There are three different pathways to a Legendary Backpiece: PvE (Fractals), PvP, and WvW. Right from the get-go, WvW is out – it would take an absurd amount of time just sitting in WvW to accomplish anything. Conversely, PvP is achievable from just about anyone, as none of the requirements involve being particularly successful, e.g. top ranks. The roadblock I have with PvP at the moment though is that you need to complete 50 matches before you unlock the ability to queue into Ranked matches, which the achievements revolve around. It shouldn’t necessary be a “roadblock” for someone who enjoys the experience, but… well, let’s just say I am still figuring that out.
Unlocking the Backpiece via Fractals would perhaps be the most preferred method, but I have not been super successful in finding groups for that. Indeed, I only just recently went into my first Strike Mission, which are sort of mini-raids with just a single boss. It probably does not help that I only play late in the evenings. While the general consensus is to just start your own groups and see what happens, I am not necessarily that committed to the endeavor.
As for the accessories… sigh. To unlock Aurora, you first need to complete a collection achievement for four different items across Season 3 Living World episodes. Just one of those involves finding forty (40!) tokens across a map, some of which are hidden in the infamous Chalice of Tears jumping puzzle. Just look at this Wiki page. That’s just ONE piece. Of four. Then you have to charge the final product up at 21 other locations around the world. Then combine that charged up product with three other collections of materials, which are themselves collections of other materials. The whole thing is rather ridiculous when laid out all at once.
Of course, continuing to play GW2 at all might be considered rather ridiculous.
We’ll see what happens. I am making some headway in other games, and I can see further progress on the horizon if/when I free up extra time by putting GW2 on the backburner/on ice. The tricky part will be actually doing that. It’s seductively easy to log in, collect some easy rewards on each of the characters, and then log off. But before then, oh hey, this meta event is going on, let me just get those rewards. And now I just have an hour left to play “real” games. It’s a rough life, I know.
A Daily in the Life of: GW2
Log into Guild Wars 2. Alt-tab and open the TaCo addon, which provides invaluable overlay support to extra activities, should I choose to engage with them.
Load main character (Scourge). Collect daily login bonus. Today is Day 8 of the 28-Day cycle, which is four Mystic Coins. The prices of Mystic Coins have collapsed since the End of Dragons expansion, presumably because the new Legendary weapon options that came with it use less of them. I have also heard that some cheater may have been banned a while back, and tanked the market? In any case, they used to be worth 2g apiece and today they are 71s. I bank them with the rest, bringing my total stash to 415. That seems like a lot, but apparently you need like 230+ of them for one Legendary.
Waypoint to Divinity’s Reach, enter home instance. Not many personal nodes in there – the math says you’d need like 500+ days just to break even on the typical 50g purchase price – but the Quartz node in there supposedly sometimes drops Charged Quartz Crystals which are otherwise 1/day limited.
And… holy shit, it actually happened:
Waypoint to bank to deposit goods. Use the Ley-Energy Matter Converter for some “free” goodies, same with Princess (eating some of the thousands of Draconite Ore I stashed for some reason). Between the AH and the vendor, I made about 21s.
Waypoint to Lion’s Arch, near a Skritt vendor that gives me a Provisioner token in exchange for a Mystic Forge Stone. I have 108 of the latter somehow and this appears to be the best use for them. Waypoint to Durmand Priory with its easy Commune Hero Point to turn 25 Quartz Crystals into a Charged version once per day. Waypoint to Black Citadel near another Provisioner token NPC, this time trading one for an Obsidian Shard. Need 50 total Provisioner tokens to exchange for a Gift of Craftmanship, a component in Legendary Sigils and Runes. I could earn more than 2/day from these and other vendors, but the other exchanged goods cost money and I’m not in a particular hurry. Two per day will add up over time – I have 42 total, for example.
At this point, I check the actual Daily quest options. If you complete three “achievements” from a rotating list, you get 2g straight up plus some other bonuses. Some are more annoying than others. I generally hope for “Mine/Chop/Gather X nodes,” “Vista Point in Y area,” and “WvW Big Spender.” Of the WvW options, I will settle for things like killing a Sentry or capping a Shrine, but it’s highly dependent on what’s actually going on in WvW at the time. Today is… ugh. Veteran Creature Slayer or Kill 5 Guards. These aren’t hard but increases the risk of me encountering enemy players. Luckily, a Jumping Puzzle is one of the daily options and TaCo will provide an overlay of exactly where to go and how to jump.
Completed all three, collect the 2g. There’s more I can do, but I switch to alts now.
Load Daredevil. They are already at Flax farm in Draconis Mons. Collect all the nodes, sell the 14 Piles of Flax Seeds for 43s. I could just keep the alt here, but I use the Spearmarshal’s Plea item to teleport to a small corner of a map on the opposite side of the world. Just south of that destination is a guaranteed Rich Orichalcum Vein. Sell the 10 ore for 31.8s. I use a Watchwork Pickaxe bought with Karma, which adds an extra 6.75s worth of sellable goods to the haul.
Load Renegade. They are right by the Rich Orichalcum Vein mentioned above. They get a rare gem proc, which is an extra 7.5s, totaling basically 45s altogether. Use the Season 3 Portal Tome to port to Draconis Mons, in basically a reverse route as the Daredevil. Somehow get 16 Flax and a bonus item, selling for 50s even.
Load Mirage. Repeat above.
Load Mechanist. This alt is parked near a Grand Chest in Echovald Wilds, in the new expansion. Looting it gives a Jade Runestone worth 36s by itself, and I occasionally get two. The chest also has about 6ish Unusual Coins which… probably have some purpose. Not selling anything just yet, just in case.
Load Tempest. This alt is parked near the three chests in the Sanctum of Nabkha from Path of Fire. I honestly don’t really know why. Most of the items can’t actually be sold (below minimum price on the AH). I do get 25+ Trade Contracts, which is a sort of expansion currency. Hmm. After checking the Wiki, the Trade Contracts are necessary to use with other goods to trade for Funerary Incense, which is then used to help build Legendary weapons. So… probably that reason.
Load Firebrand. This alt is parked at Bjora Marches, near the frozen waterfall. There are three chests here that can each be opened once per day for a lot of Eternal Ice currency plus other (low-value) goodies. Eternal Ice can be converted to other map currency, to use in the creation of a Legendary without having to farm in more annoying ways.
Done.
Total haul appears to be 2.62g + 2g + miscellaneous currencies. I don’t typically do the Flax/Ore loop on my Scourge, Mechanist, or Firebrand, despite it being fairly easy to get them back into position, thereby losing out on another 2.62g daily cash. Resetting the Tempest would be more annoying than it is worth, assuming I value Trade Contracts at all. Which I do, for the hypothetical future.
At the time of this writing, 4.62g is worth exactly 15 gems. Buying 800 gems costs $10, which means… 8 gems equals ten cents. I earned about $0.20 with all that activity. Not difficult activity, but not nonzero either. Jesus Christ, I never bothered doing the math until just now, writing this post. What the fuck am I doing with my life?
Log off.
Skyscale, Go
A few days ago I finally unlocked the Skyscale mount in Guild Wars 2.
Unlocking it has been one of the most absurdly grindy things I have done in an MMO. I haven’t played every MMO out there and certainly not even more than a handful with any sort of seriousness, so I cannot speak towards where it may rank, objectively.
That said, the day that I quit WoW for the first time, I made this criticism about a similar grind:
The difference between creating enough content to occupy people for a month versus creating content it takes a person a month to complete is the difference between bankruptcy and a sweet raise. Think about those Tol Barad trinkets you spent 30+ days “earning.” That they required 125 marks and Exalted reputation was entirely arbitrary. It was not about creating content, it was about creating a time wall that needed to be dismantled brick by brick by repetitive activity which creates an illusory value to the end-product. Something you have worked towards accumulates value that simply getting it right away would lack.
The Skyscale unlock chain is not “repeat 30 daily quests” which, at first, is a mark in its favor. But in the final analysis… perhaps daily quests ain’t so bad.
I used this site and addons to work through everything over a period of about two weeks. Again, that’s better than 30 days of dailies, yeah? Ehh… maybe not. For posterity’s sake, here is the basic summary:
- Complete all the Living World Season 4 content
- Find Gorrik on the Dragonfall map
- Pick up 21 Skyscale Scales around Dragonfall
- Complete 5 achievements around Dragonfall to purchase medicine from vendors
- Give medicine to 14 Skyscales around Dragonfall
- Collect 21 Skyscale eggs around Dragonfall
So far, so good. Then comes Saving Skyscales. To complete this achievement, you must complete 12 achievements which themselves have 4-5 sub-achievements from around the game, ostensively to understand under what conditions are best to hatch these eggs.
- Complete 55 sub-achievements from all over the world
- Jumping puzzles, environmental damage, events, a whole gamut of nonsense
- Collect 14 treats from mobs around the game
- Feed your Skyscale 12 times (4/day timegate)
- Food can be bought for 3.8g but otherwise requires 1/day account-bound resource
- Collect 4 toys
- One is at end of event chain, another requires 30+ gold or max jeweler
- Find your hidden Skyscale 21 times
- 8 are in jumping puzzles, 3 at world bosses; can skip a step with 7g/each item
- Play with your Skyscale 18 times, twice
- Collect saddle components
- 250 map-specific currency across six maps total
- Return To X achievements makes this trivial; otherwise it would be weeks of grinding
- Complete 28 flying lessons across the world
At the end of all this toil, you receive the Skyscale, a mount that is essentially a combination of the Griffon and Springer. That is selling it a bit short, of course. The reality is that it is a sort of helicopter that allows for hovering and just enough useful maneuverability to supplant multi-mount swapping. At least, that is what I tell myself to keep the dissonance at bay.
It is probably good game design to have these sort of extreme quests (in the historical form of that word) available, especially in games like GW2. These sort of things give you something to work towards, especially in a game bereft of typical character progression. Although there is already Legendary gear.
I just… don’t like how they went about it. There are steps that were just very obviously busy work. Having to get 250 map currency across six maps is frankly absurd, especially before the Return of X achievements were released. To contextualize that, you would basically have to run around a map looking for special resource nodes, hit them up, and get between 0-3 currency. That’s right, they’re not even guaranteed! The nodes are Account-based, so you are probably looking at maybe 40-50 currency a day by hitting the entire map, doing multiple events, completing Hearts, and more.
All to… build a saddle. Wut?
My least favorite stage was Saving Skyscales with the 55 nested achievements, but at least that ostensively made sense: see if your dragon egg responds to the Spirit of Fire by exposing it to flames from important heat-based lore locations. It’s arbitrary, but makes “sense.” Meanwhile, finding your Skyscale in 21 random-ass places? Busy work. Map currency? Busy work. Might as well have tacked on 101 Heart completions from Tyria on the list for all the similar meaning it would evoke.
In any case, that’s one bullet-point down, five to go. I’m actually on the first chapter of the Icebrood Saga right now, so let’s see if this momentum continues!
10 Years of Guild Wars 2
Little late to the party, but two weeks ago marked 10 years since the release of Guild Wars 2.
Surprisingly, I’m still playing.
Okay, perhaps “still” needs some quotation marks or an asterisk or two. There have been multiple, years-long periods where nary a guild has been warred. But it is absolutely true that I have been low-key doing daily quests and farming for probably well over six months now. And it is even more true that I ended up purchasing the ultra-deluxe edition of the End of Dragons expansion, that came with a bunch of extra premium currency.
Even more true than that is the fact that… I continue to play the game all wrong.
As any long-term reader could readily diagnose, my problem is an unhealthy desire for efficiency. Why do X when you could do X + Y instead? Because Y requires Z, about 15 hours of research, and meanwhile you never get around to doing X in the first place.
Let’s start basic. What I want to do is set my Future Self up for success whenever I get back to playing GW2 “for real.” So, for example, these last six months I have parked all my alts around a certain resource node, mined it, switched characters, repeat, log off. That plus the log-in rewards plus the occasional daily set if it’s achievable within 5 minutes has resulted in a nice nest egg. Thanks, Past Self.
Now that I am “back” in the game, I have additional priorities:
- Play through Icebrood Saga content
- Play through End of Dragons content
- Try some of the new Elite specs
- Work towards completing “Return of” achievements for free Legendary
- Work towards unlocking Skyscale mount
- Work towards unlocking some Legendary gear
The rational thing to do would be to pick something and do that thing in particular. But we’re not rational, we’re efficient. Which means spending dozens of hours setting yourself up for future success rather than using those same dozen hours achieving it.
So, for example, instead of continuing to mine that random ore node all my alts are already parked at, wouldn’t it be more efficient to park them at a node that provides resources towards completing Legendary gear? Absolutely, let me just try and start plowing through the Living World mission that unlocks that resource. But wait, since I am already low-key working towards a future Legendary, I should go ahead and set things up to work on the other time gates I know are ahead. Okay… I can get two Provisioner tokens a day just teleporting around, and I have plenty of resources to craft the 1/day Lump of whatever cooldown. Druid Stones take… alright, they take completing 4 Hearts in a certain area everyday for like 16 days. Better work that into my daily routine. Man, I already got all the achievements done for the “Return of” meta in this map other than redoing the story mode. I really want to try another new Elite spec for that though, because my Scourge is getting a little stale. Damn, my Engineer already spent all their Hero Points so they can’t unlock Mechanist without doing End of Dragons areas though. I wonder if I can just pop into the new zone real quick and then ignore everything while going around the map? Damn, I’m pretty close to the Skyscale though…
And so on, and so forth.
I suppose it is remarkable enough that all of this is still compelling in 2022. I mean, yeah, some of that compulsion originates from my side of the screen. But there are some things still extremely unique to the GW2 experience. “Quest” chains like the Skyscale are both meme-worthily long and relatively achievable, provided you eat the elephant one spoonful at a time. Combat isn’t difficult, but it can be satisfying. The mounts in the game are both a joy to use and perfectly enhances the scale of the world rather than diminishing it. There is an Explicit Schedule of Villainy that ensures there is something going on practically all the time. And there are people that appear out of the woodwork eager to engage in these scheduled events for some reason. Seriously though, no one really know how the economy of the game even works, but somehow it continues to do so. Okay, sure, the Mystic Toilet requiring you to flush thousands of materials away to create Legendary gear is one reason demand for goods have not yet collapsed, but are there really that many people working towards them simultaneously?
I don’t have all the answers. I don’t even have the answer as to whether I will still be playing in a week. But of all the F2P/B2P MMOs out there that I have tried, GW2 is the only one that has felt “real” enough to “matter.” As in, time you spent playing and unlocking things would still provide utility years later. Granted, the marketing department is nearly nonexistent, the balance team doesn’t play their own game (although someone is recently cleaning house), and you can never really tell with NCSoft titles how long they are for the world. However! I am glad Guild Wars 2 has made it to the ten years mark, and here’s hoping it goes on for another ten. Or at least as long as my interest persists.
World of Guildcraft Wars, Too
World of Warcraft’s next expansion was revealed today, and its theme is… Guild Wars 2.
Sorry. It’s called Dragonflight, deals with helping dragons reclaim their legacy, will “provide a more in-depth open world experience going forward,” and features new dragonriding skill that lets you “defy gravity while using your momentum and skills.” Here is a video of it in motion:
I get that the entire history of WoW is copying other peoples’ homework and all, but something about this is… a bit too on the nose.
Anyway. There were some other items that popped out at me.
Cross-Faction Coming Soon. Technically old news (first revealed in January), it was nevertheless interesting to hear cross-faction grouping being brought up again. While Blizzard is still being ultra-conservative with it – not being able to join guilds is probably going to make organized raiding problematic – cross-faction play of some kind is one of those things that never really made sense not to have in WoW during its heyday. I have had real, non-theoretical conversations with coworkers in the past wherein we (briefly) got excited to learn the other played WoW, only to face the double disappointment of being A) on the wrong server, or B) the wrong faction, or C) both.
If only we knew why it took so long…
…oh, right.
Talent Trees Return. Overrated. It’s mildly interesting that they have a class tree and a spec tree separately, but that is just lampshading the “lack” of a borrowed power system in the expansion.
WotLK Classic. Expected, but nevertheless still hit me in the feels. Everyone has a WoW entry point they feel nostalgic for, and for me it is WotLK… despite my actually starting to play in Burning Crusade. Epic scope, epic music, ground-breaking raiding (in 10m flavors!), and some great guild members relationships. Devs mentioned intentionally leaving out the Dungeon Finder for “social fabric” reasons which, okay, whatever. It will be interesting to see what happens to said fabric when everyone is trying to farm badges for gear.
UI Improvements. This sort of thing might seem minor at first, but not being able to get my screen looking like it did the last time I played WoW ends up being a rather large, subconscious barrier to reentry. Addon Managers can remove some of the tedium, but having a lot of the same functionality within the base UI is more ideal.
Cosmic Plot Intermission. Coming out of the narrative disaster that is Shadowlands, it’s refreshing to see Blizzard basically hitting the pause button. Nothing in the trailer hinted at some kind of Big Bad Guy to face, or that the fate of the world was once again at stake. It’s always possible that that comes later, but the tone is being set early on. Reminds me a bit of Mists of Pandaria minus the faction war.
Everything Else. K.
This is the part of the post where I talk about how I’m intrigued by what Blizzard is doing and will probably resub to see the new content. Probably not this time around.
A pause in the power escalation is necessary, but… I don’t like dragons. Not quite on the level of hate Syp has for elves, but dragons are a solid third place above “It was all a dream” and Time Travel in terms of ire. What possibly interesting story could ever be made concerning dragons? I don’t just mean in Dragonflight, I mean in any fiction. Yes, I watched The Hobbit, played Skyrim and Dragon Age, etc etc. In all cases, dragons could be replaced with an infinitely more interesting colossal beast with no impact to the storytelling. Dragons are flying, hoarding tropes. Vampires? A lot of directions you could take a story. Dragons? Replace it with an eldritch horror of some kind and get a much more engaging tale.
So, yeah. Good luck, have fun.
In An Age 
End of Year: 2025 Edition
Dec 31
Posted by Azuriel
Similar to 2024, with 100% more leopards eating faces.
Workwise, not much has changed since last time around… which is a good thing! I have put off the certification I needed, but procrastination won’t be possible in 2026. There are a few people who will be retiring in the next year or two, and I’ve been given the nod to take over for one of them. While the increased title will be nice, the pay bump is generally limited to 5% and is not really worth the added stress. Nevertheless, it is really the only form of advancement left where I’m at and I still have quite some time until pension-based retirement. Hope the world still exists in a recognizable state by then!
Family-wise, everything is fantastic. Wife managed to get her student (including graduate) loans forgiven literal weeks before Trump started fucking everyone over, so that’s good. The Little Man is making tremendous progress in 1st grade and overcoming all sorts of challenges that came his way. Also, he’s playing videogames now, so my life is just about complete.
Onto the games played this calendar year.
Steam (325.5h)
Under my normal “rules,” Abiotic Factor should not be on the list, as I played ~19 hours of it last year. However… seems a bit silly to not have it on there, no? The Steam Replay stats show that I had a 21-day streak of booting it up, with an overall count of 64 sessions. Which means that I played over two hours on average each time. Really a testament to how hard I fall for good survival crafting games.
Speaking of both rules and survival crafting games, I did leave off 7 Days to Die (Rebirth mod) and No Man’s Sky despite racking up about 40-50 additional hours apiece on them. The former has been getting a lot of very interesting updates on the base game lately, indicating a practically seismic shift in terms of dev attitude. For example, they brought back glass jars! Regarding NMS, I like what they’re doing with things, I just wish they’d put more than like three people on getting Light No Fire started.
Epic Game Store (10h)
Yep. How embarrassing is that? Epic is even offering Battlefield 6 for $49 plus 20% back and I still had to have a long think on it. I’m actually passing on BF6 for now because I don’t want to get into another time-killing game when I have so many single-player experiences waiting to be, er, experienced. Many of which are, in fact, on Epic. Perhaps playing Epic games will lead me to opening the launcher more…
Xbox Game Pass (228.5h)
As always, one has to ask “was Game Pass worth the subscription this year?” Unlike in prior years, I had no banked cheap subscription cards, so I paid $148 total (including December’s new $16.50 price). Based merely on the games played and the hours thereof… probably not. Granted, Avowed and The Outer Worlds 2 retailed for $70 apiece, so technically just those two alone would have paid for everything, let alone Alters and Silksong. To say nothing of the other games I have installed and ready to go, like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Metaphor: ReFantazio, Warhammer 40k: Rogue Trader. Or the others I have bookmarked like Hogwarts Legacy, Dragon Age: Veilguard, Grounded 2, and so on.
In other words, if the subscription wasn’t worth it, that’s really on me.
Game-wise, it’s a bit funny seeing two Obsidian games up there at the same time, e.g. Avowed and Outer Worlds 2. They share a lot of the same DNA, including how traversal feels in the world, but also some of the same foibles, e.g. problematic Legendary weapons, lack of romance options for companions. Once I get around to finishing Outer Worlds 2, it will be interesting to gauge how it feels in comparison to its brother. The answer may end up surprising you! (Hint: one game allows respecs).
Switch (unknown hours)
Yeah, buddy! Father-son game time! The Little Man has a long way to go in terms of solo play, but I really appreciated being able to play Odyssey with one person controlling Mario and the other the hat. Indeed, we straight-up beat that game a few months ago now, and have even restarted as my son wanted to play it again. This time, I’m a backseat driver at most (with Assist Mode on, of course).
Super Mario Wonder is another hit with The Little Man, but as a more straight-up platformer, it’s considerably more difficult. In Odyssey, you can get hit five times before dying, and even go hide somewhere to regain your health. If you drop down a pit in Wonder, you dead. Or rather, you will float back as a ghost and only lose the life if your partner can’t touch you within the five-second window. Still, the penalty is much harsher. And somehow we all raw-dogged this kind of shit back in the 80s?
The Switch has a lot of additional games at the ready, for when The Little Man gets a bit better and/or I have more inclination to play it by myself. For example, I have both Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom on there. Oh, and Super Mario Galaxy 1 & 2 are on their way.
Guild Wars 2 (probably several hundred hours)
Yep, still playing every day since I re-re-restarted back in October. It’s probably the #1 factor in how little I have “accomplished” in terms of other game completion. Then again, if I were truly in the mood for whatever else, I probably would have just played that. I made time for Outer Worlds 2, for example.
As far as what I’m doing, well, I finally got around of completing the Secrets of the Obscure expansion story after months of slow-rolling it. I also started Janthir Wilds long enough to unlock Spears, as that seems to be a meta weapon for several classes. Chances are good that I skip Janthir for now and go directly into the newer Visions of Eternity, if only because that’s where most daily/weekly quests are pointing. Plus, you know, most people and/or most profitable activities.
Incidentally, I sprung for some gem store purchases a few days ago, after essentially talking myself out of a few Steam games. After all, if my argument is that spending money on games I’m not going to play immediately is silly, then that means spending money on games you are currently playing must be wise. That’s how it works, right?
Other Unmentionables
I stopped playing Hearthstone back in October and the streak of not playing continues. I even uninstalled it from my phone, freeing up like 8 GB of space. Still have it installed on the PC though.
Hmm… October. Isn’t that about the time I started playing Guild Wars 2 again? Surely a coincidence!
What’s Next
As always, I vacillate between “must finish games before uninstalling” and “stop playing when you stop having fun.” Last year was the latter, and this year will be the former. Sorta. I’m a reasonable guy. For example, I want to close out FF7: Rebirth because the final part of the trilogy is something I want to play. Elden Ring though? It’s been two years, so that is probably getting uninstalled. Anyway, the list!
Those are in order, although perhaps Death Stranding should be above BG3, I dunno. There are more games that I probably “should” be playing, but let’s be reasonable, shall we?
Posted in Commentary
2 Comments
Tags: End of Year, Epic Game Store, Guild Wars 2, Steam, Xbox Game Pass