[GW2] A Villain with a little Va Va Voom

Lewis over at Ten Ton Hammer wrote a piece recently detailing why he thinks a Guild Wars 2 expansion is on the horizon. I don't want to repeat all the stuff he said about why its coming, needless to say its an argument with which I agree - and I've seen other very clever people saying the same thing, so I'm inclined to believe that we are right.
He also asked what we'd like to see. I think most people's reactions are all stuff that I'd like to see too - new races, professions, armour, weapons and skills. To be honest I took these to be a given, what I'd really really like to see is a good ol' fashioned villain. 

I want a villain akin to Moriarty, Lex Luthor or Doctor Claw (ask your parents, kids!) and I'm going to tell you why the Elder Dragons simply won't cut it this time, at least not on their own.

Think of the baddies who make you squirm, the ones who make you gnash your teeth or slam your book, controller or theatre viewing binoculars down in disbelief  - jaw gaping at the sheer skulduggery of it all.

The ones who betray the hero at the last second, revealing their Machiavellian plan as they slowly wheel him or her towards a pit of lava or into a pool of ill-tempered sea bass. They all have real personalities and lives, relationships to the characters - more often than not they have qualities which the hero of the piece sees in themselves ("we're not so different, you and I"). Some are flawed, others are downright damaged (often by the actions of the protagonist earlier in life) and we get to know them personally and the connections they have to every other character and how our lives are interwoven with theirs and, in a way, how poetic it is that we should be the ones to face them in the end.
In some ways we see ourselves in them, or at least we understand how they reached the brink of madness on which they teeter... and so we hate them, because we know how easily it could have been us.
Given a different circumstance Bruce Wayne could have ended up mad like the Joker, Prof Xavier could easily have used his powers for evil like Magneto, and we even saw it in what I believe to be the best villain in a video game to date - GlaDOS (spoilers) - we see how quick and easy it was for Wheatley, our mild-mannered sidekick, to become corrupted by immense power.

An Elder Dragon does not have any of these qualities. An Elder Dragon is a whirling thunderstorm of hate, hunger and lust. They are elemental. They do not have personalities and so we cannot see ourselves in them, and so we cannot hate them. Our drive to destroy them is simply "they are a bad thing, if I do not kill them more bad things will happen and that would be bad". 

They are a daunting foe, sure, but they are no villain. If we are going to face Mordremoth (and there's no telling if this confrontation will be saved for the Living Story ending or if they might stretch it out to an expansion) then I think another soulless strategic campaign against an enemy which we have no real strong feelings for will not provide as compelling a narrative as one with a truly despicable (and hateable) supervillain at the end.

What we need is a pre-existing character. One who is close to our party. Someone who might betray the group and drag them to their lowest point - just when they think they are getting the upper hand.
No no no - Trahearne is far too obvious, come on use a little imagination. We need someone with a little vavavoom, a little mystery. There are, in my opinion, two main candidates:

Canach has shown a certain ruthlessness, a willingness to do a little bad in order to achieve a lot of good. This is actually a relatively common trope amongst villains, (Bane, Tyrion Lannister, Walter White, Gabriel in Constantine etc etc) and it is easy for the "little bad" to become "lots of bad" as things spiral out of control and the antagonist rationalises ever more evil deeds in pursuit of his or her noble goal.
He hits the "not so different, you and I" quota also. He is a good guy driven bad by circumstance and again that could have so easily been us.
The only drawback is that he is currently on a path of redemption, and I'm not sure the message ANet want to send with his story is "rehab doesn't work, kids". That might just be too much of a downer. I wonder if he could simply be a fall-guy - the one which we all suspect as being behind it all, the one which all clues point to until the very final second when the true puppetmaster is shown to be:

Faolain. She is a character who seems built to make our skin crawl, and we really don't know why yet. She has a past with Caithe, and claims to love her very much. They were close friends once, perhaps even lovers and Caithe still, on some level at least, trusts her. Caithe has always been seen to be stoic, infallible almost to the level of humourlessness but Faolain seems to be able to break down these walls and get underneath her leaves.
She is the leader of the Nightmare Court, an ostensibly evil character, an enemy even, but nevertheless she seems to be Caithe's one weakness and there seems to be the very strong suggestion that "Caithe's Secret" has something to do with her. Something in her past which she has buried somewhere deep inside and hopes will never see the light of day. Scarlet knew it, perhaps as a result of delving deep into the history of the Pale Tree.
I've ruminated on the idea that perhaps the sylvari could be the Pale Tree's natural defense against the Elder Dragons. In light of new information, perhaps the relationship between the dragons and the Tree is not so antagonistic, and this is what Caithe and Faolain know, and what Scarlet saw, on account of being "first born"?

I would like to see Faolain be the Eldritch Horror at the end of Guild Wars 2's first expansion. As a servant of the Elder Dragons - a part of the earth, just like the Pale Tree and the Dragons themselves.

How I'd Like to See it Go Down:

Imagine a story in which we delve deeper into the dream, and the deeper we get the more clues about the connection between the Tree, the sylvari and the Dragons are unearthed. But the closer we get to the truth, the more drawn and distant Caithe becomes - she warns we are digging too deep, and might not like what we find, she argues with Canach and they both disappear into the darkness. The group suspects Canach (and perhaps there is some handily planted evidence to support our suspicions) has kidnapped Caithe and is some kind of Dragon worshipper.

The final confrontation takes place at a bloodstone site somewhere in Maguuma, we face off against our foe - who we suspect to be Canach, he is standing alone shouting fos us to "stay back!". Nonetheless, we march forward, but as we approach to make an arrest a thick vine appears out of nowhere and impales him!
Riding upon a twisted tendril is Faolain and at her feet is the mangled body of Caithe. All these years, she tells us, she had been grooming Caithe for this - this blood sacrifice to bring about the rise of an age of Nightmare. Using Caithe's first-born blood, Faolain channels the Elder Dragon energy from the earth, absorbing it all and driving her mad in the process, she can't contain all that energy in her small body - she explodes into a gigantic sylvari nightmare beast!

We struggle to keep up with the pace of battle, but are no slackers, we persevere but just as we are about to strike the killing blow the dragon takes over, knocking the entire party to the ground and rising up above us - preparing to consume us all!
Off to the side comes a beleaguered groan - the air seems to stand still and silent - Canach claws his way to his knees and grits his teeth, snarling at the dragon beast in front of him. Struggling he rises to his feet but bereft of energy, he stumbles and is caught by a flash of light - the image of the Pale Tree draws him to his feet. Just as the Dragon poured all his energy into Faolain, so too does the Pale Tree pour her energy into Canach.
Enraged, the Faolain/Dragon beast screams of the injustice of a second born being granted such a blessing - drawing up all her hate and spite, the beast lunges at Canach but he swats her away easier than a fly, Faolain smashes against the trunk of the Tree and the Dragon Spirit bursts forth from her body. The love of the Pale Tree is no match for the choas and hate of the Elder Dragon.

We then begin our final battle with the dragon spirit itself, but we are imbued with great gifts of strength and ability from the Pale Tree's blessing and with Canach at our side we fight our way through the spirit and to Faolain's body - the conduit which is giving him form - just as we did with Scarlet, we finish her once and for all.

After the battle we mourn the loss of Caithe and Canach who cannot return to his former life, he must now live as the vision of the Pale Tree, one with the eternal alchemy having restored balance for a while at least. His is truly a story of redemption, willing to sacrifice his own life to save others, but not in such a way that he takes the fight away from us. Faolain is a villain who betrays us, kills our friends in front of our faces but is still ultimately a victim of the draw of the power of the Dragon.

Sales soar. ANet become billionaires. Everyone is happy.

Apart from Trahearne who was killed at some point.

ps. The only drawback is that it would be yet another female sylvari corrupted by dragon power. Maybe they all just look evil to me, I dunno.

[GW2] A Proposal to Increase Population of Home Cities

Just as ArenaNet intended, Lion's Arch is the most populated city in the game. And rightly so - it has free transport (though currently convoluted - but hopefully that will change), all the amenities in easily accessible locations and access to the Mystic Forge, WvW/PvP areas, portals to all other cities and finally the jumping puzzles. It's a fantastic city.

However, as a result of LA's popularity - each of the racial home cities is relatively neglected. Even at peak times you'd struggle to find 10 people wandering around these superbly constructed metropolises. This is a shame, all that effort made by the designers really shouldn't be going to waste. We need to encourage a sense of ownership of each city for the equivalent race. So, here's a few rough thoughts about how ANet might encourage people to return home.

1) Add in certain inherent bonuses for races when they're in their home cities. Buffs such as increased crafting critical or increased chance to salvage armour successfully would really bring the people home. This is a tough one, because you don't want to intentionally split the community down racial lines and essentially force people to city-hop when they're doing tasks (ie, craft the armour in LA, hop to the Grove to salvage it for ectos). So, perhaps these could be on a cycle? During the day in the Grove sylvari huntsman have a higher chance to critical due to sunlight aiding in their tree-singing. Asuran artificers have a higher chance to critical during the hours of 9-5 in Rata Sum because of their fantastic work ethic. On Sundays in Hoelbrak norn cooks have a higher chance to critical because the weekend is for feasting! By making the bonuses relatively short-term it would mean that if people choose to craft in LA they wouldn't be significantly disadvantaged - but it would draw some of the crafting crowd to home cities.
Perhaps you could even do away with the racial element entirely, and just say "Huntsman in the Grove gain a crafting critical bonus during the day" to draw in the tourist crowd.

2) For the love of all that is holy - free.fricken.waypoints. The current process to get to Divinity's Reach is: "click crossed swords at top of screen - travel to the mists - run across the courtyard into the portal to LA - reach LA - waypoint to city portals - run through portal to Divinities Reach - arrive at destination". This is ridonkulous - just give us free travel to LA for everyone, and free travel to our home cities for the equivalent races.

3) Add in more city-based events. Currently the only thing which gives anyone a reason to travel to another home city is keg-brawl in Hoelbrak. Give us a Sunday market in Divinity's Reach selling cut-price "food-in-bulk". Give us bar-crawls in Hoelbrak on a Friday night, pit-fighting in the Black Citadel every Wednesday and Polymock in Rata Sum (get that portal working for crying out loud). Give people the chance to say "Hey, *insert guildmate name here* it's Saturday, we should go to the Grove and watch the Tree-singers!".

4) Improve the home instance. Currently the place is pretty pitiful - most people don't really know where theirs is, and if they do they might have been there only once or twice in 300 hours of playing (speaking for myself). Improving this feature could be the subject of an entire post in itself. But I've got a few quick suggestions:

• A noticeboard showing your friends'/Guildmates' stats.
• Buffs for visiting certain NPCs you encountered along your storyline. "Go and visit the orphanage you saved and get an hour long 5% speed boost (to get away from those snivelling little... *cough* bundles of joy)"
• Weapon/Armour racks. What am I going to do with my Mystic Battlehammer once I (a long way off) get Sunrise? I want to display it!
• Allow us to waypoint directly into our instance. 

5) Jumping puzzles. I love these things, I do the ones in LA a few times a week compared to the ones in the wide world which I might do once or twice during my entire play time. Give us one or two JPs in each city and you'll draw the lazy jumper crowd at least once a day. Divinities Reach has some brilliant opportunities to add a rooftop-trotting puzzle, and Rata Sum is in dire need of a puzzle which could take us either under or above the city on floating cubes.

Those are just a few of the ways we could improve the home cities. I think even one or two would improve them immensely.

EDIT: Or you could just fill Lion's Arch with scaly monsters from the deep. That might encourage people to visit the other cities.

[GW2] The Lost Shores

We all knew there was something big coming in November. I don't think the anticipation has quite had the chance to peak - considering we're still riding the Halloween wave.
But now it's here:

THE LOST SHORES

The Lost Shores

November 2012

Something stirs in the Sea of Sorrows…

Unravel a mystery of monstrous proportions in The Lost Shores, a massive one-time world event that will change Tyria forever! 

Oh my LORD!

The screenshots don't give too much away - a ship (possibly undead) lurking in the background, strange anemone and coral-like structures. It looks like a totally new zone! "Monstrous Proportions" suggests massive world-bosses on a dragon-scale (pun totally and utterly intended)! If this event will truly "change Tyria forever!" then I will be very happy!
Perhaps this could also coincide with the very eagerly anticipated third novel "Sea of Sorrows" by *sigh* Ree Soesbee (sorry B). So excited!

Also worth noting the "December 2012 - Coming soon!" part at the top - suggesting an equally exciting update will be dropping in December (though this could just (and I just the word "just quite wrongly here) be Wintersday).

[GW2] Every Damn Time

If this happens with every single MMO launch, and we expect it to happen - why does it still happen?

Surely there must be something which can be put in place to combat the first-day lockout.

I understand that when you build the server structure, you probably build with the average day in mind - and day 1 is not the average day.

I'm not raging, by any means, the question is directed more at the subject of MMO releases generally: why does this still seem to happen every damn time?

[GW2] Oooh lordy... This post has no words

 001 baby...

 Encased in carbonite...

 or just strapped in like a boss...

 *best Bradd Pitt in Se7en voice* What's in the box?!

 Dazzled...

BRING ON THE 25TH!

[GW2] GuildMag Blog Carnival - Learning to Wait

It’s been 5 years since we first heard concrete confirmation that we would not be receiving another Guild Wars expansion, and would instead have Guild Wars 2 to look forward to. And half a decade on here we are – still waiting eager eyed and slavering at the mouth, but not for much longer.

Rather frustratingly, the 5 year development of Guild Wars 2 has been somewhat “atomic”. Not just in its explosive rise to one of the most anticipated games of the new decade which we’ve seen over the past year or so; but also in its composition – vast amount of wide update-less space punctuated by the occasional proton of news or neutron of a blog-post.

My life is drastically different to what it was like 5 years ago. I was in the final year of my undergraduate degree – studying hard... *cough* no, REALLY! I was living in a flat in Durham with a couple of friends, watching daytime TV and playing Guild Wars while sitting on a purple plastic chair with a broken back. Unfortunately, the announcement of Guild Wars 2 and, with it, Eye of the North coincided with the most intense part of my dissertation write-up (“Under the Eye of St Cuthbert: Surveillance and Self-Surveillance in Durham Cathedral” 72 points – first degree honours. * breathes on nails, polishes on shirt* ah-thank you). The fact is I didn’t have quite the time to squee as much as I’d have liked, but the excitement was still palpable at Guru when I visited (back when the community was at least tolerable).

It seems I didn’t miss a whole lot though, from what I could tell at the time all we’d been told was “it’s coming” and not much else.

The years that followed are what I fondly refer to as the “When it’s ready” years. Three years of pretty much nothing: the occasional scrap of information, meagre sustenance for hungry Guild Wars players who were squeezing every inch of playtime out of the game they’ve loved for years but of which they were slowly growing tired. We were assured that behind the shroud ANet were harnessing the power of lightning to reincarnate the flesh of the long dead; building time machines, teleportation devices and rocket-boots; they were growing ears on the backs of rats. The game was coming, and while ANet tinkered, we waited.

I waited and filled my Hall of Monuments. I waited and got GWAMM. I waited and played new games. I waited and got a job, a house, bills and responsibilities. I did all those things, but ultimately I was, underneath it all, still waiting.

The most common thing I’ve heard since the start of August has been “I can’t believe it”. Whether its “I can’t believe it’s almost time” or “I can’t believe I’m going to get to play it as much as I want in just a few weeks” or even just “I CAN’T BELIEVE IT!”, disbelief is totally understandable – things which are this long coming have a nasty habit of fading away into nothing. There was the ever-present fear of the game becoming vapourware, ArenaNet going out of business or NCSoft pulling the plug. Now, with release just on the horizon, it’s up to us as supporters and players in conjunction with ANet to make sure the game stands up to the new challenges every game faces in the current market. With SWTOR, Rift, DC Universe etc all struggling in the current mire, there is a real threat that Guild Wars 2 will get caught in the intergalactic pull of the MMO black-hole. We, as players, can only really do a few things to keep the game running – keep playing, promoting, blogging, vlogging and building a community which welcomes new players and supports the game over the next few years. If we do this effectively, if we ensure that our stoic patience has not been in vain, we might see Guild Wars 2 love a life as long and as fruitful as the Guild Wars 1.

[GW2] Gemsplosion!

I think I might just about be the only person in the world not to have been hotly anticipating the release of Diablo III. Neither have I played either of the previous 2. I know, now you’re in receipt of this knowledge about my meagre video game experience, all my previous opinions can be disregarded. My friend recently implored me to “join the online sensation before we all murder you”. A tempting offer, for sure, but for all the good things I’ve heard, I’ve heard endless bad. Not least a recent article over on TL:DR by Henry Feng – University of Sydney – regarding the catastrophic imbalance in the in-game market caused by endless exploits.

Feng describes how the numerous item and gold dupes, exploits, loopholes and imbalanced farms, thrown into the mixing pot with the Real Money Auction House (RMAH) and the Gold Auction House (GAH) has caused prices of even the lowest of items to spiral out of the reach of most dedicated rule-abiding players (Feng describes how the average top-level player can make roughly 50000 coins an hour, but with the discovery of these exploits prices have spiralled into the hundreds of millions).

Now, as stated above, I’ve never played the game, so I don’t have any way corroborate the information above. But as a single case, it is an example of the kind of worries I had about the Gem Store in Guild Wars 2. If you have read my 2c on the subject of the Gem Store you will know that I wasn’t hugely enthusiastic about it – not because of the way it has been implemented, but because I disagreed with the ethical thought process behind it. I’ve had to somewhat change my tune on this, mainly because from what I’ve seen the implementation of the feature in-game is deftly done and when play-tested by the thousands involved in the Beta Weekends, it seems to hold up to scrutiny and not cause the game to explode.

However, as with everything in the game atm, beta is beta. Just as those features which currently don’t work, might work once the game is released, so too those which do work in beta, might explode upon release. As stated on Henry Feng’s article, people will always eventually find the path of least resistance. Have ANet plugged all the holes? Experience says no, and that’s no criticism of ANet, that’s just the way it is – it’s the way the world works. It would be a mammoth job to predict the myriad of ways which players might pull and stretch every element of the game before the eventual moment when they find a way to break it.

The real test is how the game holds up when ANet have to start fire-fighting, when the system inevitably creaks will the kind people of Seattle be able to bring it back into line with the game intact? Considering the 7 year life-span of Guild Wars 1, experience says yes.

SIDE NOTE:

 

After examining the Gem Store during the last beta, I couldn't see any way to change the price at which you can sell your gems - suggesting the first of the two models (in that you sell the gems to "The House" and buy them back from them rather than directly from other players.) Sorry Greibach!

FLASHBACK - [GW] Atomisation: Building with Raw Materials

Today's Flashback comes from in the not too distant past (January 2012). I went a little technical, I must have been having one of those days where it's so cold that parts of your brain freeze up and you start hallucinating. I'm not the only one who has those days, right?

If you atomise (i.e. split it up into its smallest parts) any skill system you can see it is essentially comprised of the following raw materials:

An effect (or a number of effects). These could be damage, healing, reduced movement speed, increased attack speed or other fancy things such as teleporting the player etc. The effect can vary in three respects: magnitude, condition and duration.

A cost. Usually energy/mana/magicka. It is the resource you deplete when you use the skill.

Limiting factors. These are cast time, recharge time and other fancier things like requiring skill chaining or environmental factors.

Part of the job of balancing a skill is finding an equilibrium between these three elements; and making sure that for each point of energy/adrenaline you spend (when factoring in the limiting factors) you gain the same amount of effect for every skill in the game.

E.g. if one skill costs 10 energy and does 100 damage with a 1 second cast time and 5 second recharge, and another skill costs 20 energy and does 150 damage with the same limiting factors you could say that the two skills are not balanced, because for each energy point you spend on the first skill you get 10 damage, but for each point spent on the second skill you only get 7.5 damage.

Part of what makes balancing MMOs so difficult is that you have to factor in all these elements in relation to each other both within the skill itself and in relation to every other skill in the game (this is particularly true with GW1, considering the secondary profession system gives you access to every skill in the game) and also take into account how the effect of the skill interacts with other skills available to the player. Anyway, I’m getting way off topic, for my views on balancing head here: CLICKY!

Back to my point; learning the relative weights of each of these elements can help you look at a skill and assess its worth. You can come to an axe attack which does 100 damage and know that it is garbage because of its 20 energy cost. Or look at a fireball spell which causes 50 damage for only 5 energy and know that it is essentially useless because of its 45 second recharge. On the flip-side, you could spot that a skill which does 35 damage and know that it is the dogs-bollocks because of its 1 second recharge time and ¼ second cast time.

Effective team builders are able to do this process of weighing up a skill’s worth in the context of the bar itself, in relation to every other bar in their team’s build and also in relation to the enemies they are likely to face when they step into the combat zone. The vast majority of you do these kind of mental gymnastics almost every time you log into the game, it probably comes naturally and you don’t even realise you’re doing it.

It becomes more impressive when you use it in the field: it’s more than just reacting to a gunshot in Call of Duty or deftly taking the ball around a keeper in FIFA. It is lightning-fast mental arithmetic on a grand scale; if an Iboga casts Conjure Phantasm on your Elementalist and you see that he is struggling to stay alive, you quickly calculate the advantages and disadvantages of using the mechanics and tools set in front of you. If you use your hex removal (15e, 1s cast, 15s recharge) it will remove the threat initially, but the Iboga will likely recast his hexes pretty quickly and you will have spent 15 energy and be back to square 1 without a hex removal, so that’s out of the question. You could throw Healing Breeze on him and hope to counteract the hex, but you know that you would just stem the tide (because you can see by how fast his bar is dropping that your regeneration will only neutralise the degeneration on your ally and not heal him). You decide on straight out healing and cast Orison of Healing on him to bring his health back up – this gives you a buffer, and will counter both the degeneration and the base damage he is likely receiving from other sources.

In the split second which you made this decision you calculated the relative weights of each of the skills on your bar in relation to the context of the situation and in relation to the relative weights of the skills on the opponents bar.

And they say playing video games rots your brain.

[GW2] How Vistas Feed my Need for 'Screed

With the latest Beta ArenaNet have released a new feature "Vista". A vista is a spot on the map where the player can look out and appreciate all the hard work which ANet have put into making the game so goddamn freaking beautiful.

Think of Vistas as the stereotypical rap video of Guild Wars 2 - ANet are shaking their scenic blizzle in yo' face, saying "Yo Logan Thackerizzo, check my beast landscape skillz yo. Word". I was never street.

But the really nice thing about them is that they're usually in hard-to-reach spots - on top of buildings or after relatively complicated jumping puzzles. Clambering up vast buildings takes me right back to Damascus, Venice and Rome - and makes me hunger for the next AC installment. I've enjoyed scrabbling up the sloped cubes of Rata Sum and the twisted trees of The Grove. Had to shelve the YouTube series till release when I'm going to cover the final few cities and then LA.



I would go far as to say that the Vistas, along with the Jumping Puzzles, are fast becoming my favourite thing to do in the game.

[GW2] The Movement of Gems

A couple of days ago a few of us were having a chat about the Gem Store system. I hadn’t quite grasped (and I’m still not sure I do 100%) how it will all work, but thanks to a little twitteducation I learned that whenever you’re buying your gems from the Black Lion Trading Company (hereby referred to as “The House”) you’re buying gems which a player has previously sold to The House at some point. This isn’t a closed system, as players have the ability to buy gems from ArenaNet for real-world money, and gems are then destroyed when they are traded for items in the gem store (though that is up for debate).

Here is the process, as I understand it (the black arrows indicate the movement of gems):

Theoretically, there are only ever a finite number of gems in the in-game system: moving between the players and The House (this finite number would increase/decrease depending upon whether process A or D is stronger). The price of the gems, for both purchase and sale, could either be based upon the theoretical number of gems currently in the hands of the House (ie, the more gems in the coffers, the lower the price for purchase and visa versa) OR it could be based upon the number of gem/gold interactions which have occurred between players and The House within a certain period. The latter of which is more likely, as it would not require The House to keep a long-term track on the number of gems in their “coffers”.

ArenaNet, of course, have an infinite number of gems – otherwise they would run out and we wouldn’t be able to buy from them.

EDIT (18/07/12): Made this edit to take into account Greibach's suggestions, and considering this post is getting linked to in a few places (thanks Tash!) I thought it best to show the other theories.

In the comments below Greibach has suggested a slightly altered model for the Gem system. I guess we won’t have to wait too long to find out how it actually works (and the only real difference is whether the gem prices are determined by the players or by some 3rd party process) – we’ll be able to play with the gem store on Friday evening and confirm one way or the other. See below for a quick mock-up of Greibach’s model:

5 Early Tips for the Guild Wars 2 Gamer

Here's just some quick little tips which I've discovered over the past few beta weekends and stress tests. They aren't ways to become a super-all-powerful Golemancer Necrodemon, but they will help you make a little more coin, experience a little more of the game, and find your way around easier.

1. Once you’ve completed an event, stick around and listen to the NPCs. Dynamic events are fun little snippets of a much larger story which might sweep across the entire region. Often, once you’ve completed the particular part of the event which you stumbled across, the NPCs will have a bit of a natter amongst themselves before deciding what to do next - don’t just wander off at this point! Each part of the event chain leads up to an eventual crescendo – a gigantic boss battle or frantic fight for survival. Stick around and listen to what they have to say and you get to experience the whole thing.

2. Don’t merch anything. You will almost always get a better deal for your items if you sell them to a player on the marketplace, plus you’re helping them reach their own personal goal. The more you trade in the marketplace, the more you feed your efforts back into the community and encourage a healthy economic system. Even the lowliest of white items will usually find a buyer (who wants to salvage them down to their components and sell them on). The only exceptions which I’ve found so far are the trophy items – these seem to have no use whatsoever except merchant fodder. The only drawback of selling to the market, rather than a merchant, is that you don’t get your money immediately; instead you have to periodically collect the coins by visiting the Trading Post NPC.

3. The orange symbols on the map will tell you what type of dynamic event is occurring:

• An area or NPC must be protected from harm.
• An issue that must be resolved by force.
• A specific foe that must be vanquished.
• A service or assistance that needs to be provided.
• A task involving collecting or gathering.
• An area that must be held or claimed.
• An object that must be destroyed.
• A chaotic brawl.

4. Heart Givers have some pretty SWEET items in sale in exchange for Karma. Really, you could go the entire game and end up with some amazing loot without spending a single bronze coin. Every time you complete a Heart quest, head over to the quest giver (indicated on the map by the heart symbol, which should now be filled in yellow) and take a gander at what they have to offer – they will usually have level-appropriate weapons, armour, consumables or other neat items available for Karma points.

5. Keep an eye on your zone completion status on the left hand side of the World Map:

This shows you how many Point of Interest, Renown Hearts, Resurrect Shrines and Skill Points you've found on this map. If you find them all you get an absolute AVALANCHE of items, coins and experience. It's a nice little bonus to the ultimate aim of exploring the world.

And that's it for now - there will obviously be more to come. Less than two months away now, who's excited? ME.