Waiting for my Blue Mace Lady

The GW2 bandwagon is crawling slowly closer to its next reveal, we've heard news that there will be a profession reveal over the next couple of weeks and I've heard rumour that it will be on the 27th Jan. A lot of slavering Guild Wars gurus are predicting the release of another "Soldier" class - possibly one depicted in the picture below:

This charming young woman has been dubbed "Blue Mace Lady" (BML). I know; its succint, it doesn't mess about, its a very utlitarian naming system. Recent information has been attained that the new profession will actually be called "Guardian" and Regina Buenaobra has confirmed that the update will be on the 27th. So, the whole of GW2guru is 'abuzzin with speculation about the class make-up and how it will fit into the game as a whole.

 Sometimes it can be hard to keep up with new game info, especially if you've got other stuff going on at the time. That's why it was nice to come across Sabrewolf18's Channel on YouTube earlier this morning. Over the course of about 6 months, Sabrewolf posted regular summaries of all the GW2 updates out there in nice tasty morsels. Unfortunately, he seems to have moved over to vidthru.com recently and the rest of his videos will be coming through there; so I can't embed any here (as far as I can tell, anyway!).

Finally, late 2010 we got confirmation that the 7 hero update for GW1 will be coming early in 2011. Personally, I cannot wait. GWguru patrons have been revelling in the information, and piecing together their ideal builds over the past few months.

So much tasty Guild Wars morsels are just on the horizon, its going to be a good start to 2011.

ps. hoping to get Little Big Planet 2 later today - squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

The Kodan and Guild Wars Artwork

I've been following the GW2 Twitter for a couple of weeks now and today it popped up with an update letting me know of a new blog post on the ArenaNet blog: http://www.arena.net/blog/the-wisdom-and-power-of-the-kodan. The post concerns the non-playable race of the Kodan in Guild Wars 2. Now, in a time when most of the GW community is clamoring for any information regarding the upcoming game - a whole blog post on a NPC race seems to suggest that the Kodan will play an integral role in the story of GW2 and probably more specifically, the lore of the playable race; Norn. 

 I came across the Kodan a few months ago whilst browsing through the Guild Wars 2 wiki, and I was immediately intrigued. Up until that point I had not heard even a sniff about them, and considering I've been playing the game for upwards of 5 years now and have read just about all there is to read regarding lore and literature on the game, I found them fascinating. This new blog post has only strengthened my curiousity, The Kodan are not at all what I expected them to be.

From the pictures I have seen up until now I characterised them similar to the Norn - as a proud warrior race, much more barbaric than the spiritual and altogether more conservative group that they have turned out to be. Instead they are arbitors of balance in nature, and ruthless in the protection of that balance. Far more calculated and mystical than I had imagined. Thats not to say they aren't awesome, who wouldn't love a 10ft tall polar bear wielding a sword?

I won't go into too much detail about what is revealed in the blog post - if you'd like to read about them then click the link at the top. What I will say, however, is that this new post is a brilliant example of the incredibly high standard of art that the Guild Wars 2 team is producing at a breakneck speed. The level of skill required is just immense, and their talent has not gone unnoticed, several of their artists winning a number of prestigious awards.
Finally, I'd like to congratulate the Guild Wars team on their mopping up of the competition in the recent end of year awards. Again, full details of the awards the team managed to take away can be found on the ANet blog here: http://www.arena.net/blog/fans-support-arenanet-in-year-end-awards

Independant Gaming - Torch or Lantern?

Do not let them tell you that you shouldn't post after giving blood - they are wrong, whoever these naysayers may be. I defy them! Wooziness aside...

Ever wanted to be stuck inside a cave, with nothing but a pickaxe made of diamond and some wool? Me neither. Or at least, if you asked me a few weeks ago - I'd have agreed with you. I mean, haven't you played Minecraft? What about cowering in a cupboard whilst Princess Flappyjaw snorts and growls its way around the room lusting after your skin, which would make a perfect balaclava? Never wanted that? Why the hell not? You're weird...

I see from this article over at Wired.co.uk that the Independant Gaming Festival is coming up, and Minecraft and Amnesia: The Dark Descent are both in the running for Indie game of the year. I'm torn about who I would go for - on the one hand Amnesia is pants-wettingly terrifying, there is nothing quite like the fear when your lantern runs out of oil in a dark corridor, and in the dim distance you see an leg disappear into a doorway. Of course, you turn to leave, but as you do so great fleshy tumours burst out of the walls, stringy cartilidge bars the door - you crap yourself, hit alt-f4 and go to bed to sit wide-eyed in the dark.
On the other hand, Minecraft is quite the opposite, I cannot stop playing, perhaps tomorrow I will spend an hour flattening ground to build my cathedral - bit by bit, from the ground up. Perhaps the day after that I will dig straight down, in the hopes of finding a dungeon, so that I can get wheat to start my farm. Maybe after that I'll gather 100 blocks of wool and build a woolen tower as high as I can. Its so freaking expansive, my mind boggles!

I think in the end Minecraft wins this one for me, because whilst Amnesia is innovative in removing the player's ability to fight back, it forces me not to play because it is so terrifying! I laud this as a great acheivement by the developers, but if we are going off fun-factor - then Minecraft has it beat.

Ultimately, I think both games have been revolutionary - Minecraft in its wide appeal and commitment to sandbox gameplay, and Amnesia with its shedding of the power of the weapon in survival horror gaming, and the way it forces the player to come up with other ways of making it through the twisted corridors of the castle.

I'm really glad I'm not withing range of a computer with Amnesia on it right now - in my blood deprived state I fear that the sheer terror would throw me into some kind of shock... maybe its time I just put my head on the desk...

A Trained ARG Soldier

After New Year I have come to the realisation that playing too many alternate reality games has turned me into a Cluedo/post-it note game genius. I think it must be all the mind bendingly difficult puzzles, all the late nights staring at cryptic pictures trying to piece together strands of information to gather up a story, but over the past few days I have been a fully functional criminal mastermind.

I went up to my friend's parents hotel as planned, nice journey and its always good to spend time with old friends. Sarah, the friend who was hosting the party had decided (last minute) to add a "murder mystery" theme to the proceedings and so I was armed with my ornate dagger letter opener Swatts had brought back from Venice for me, and I was ready to put my puzzlebox to the test.
The first night was the 30th, the party proper wasn't starting till the night of the 31st (as is customary for New Years eve parties I believe), so we just drank a ridiculous amount of alcohol and played board games. As the night wore on we descended from a pretty intense game of Monopoly (which I still managed to lose, even after getting hotels on Park Lane and Mayfair!) down to the game where you have a post-it note on your forehead and you have to guess who you are. I managed to get my person in 3 guesses! Booyah! Are they male? Yes. Are they over the age of 30? Yes. Are they the Principal of our old college? Yes - you dick.

The next evening was the party itself, Sarah passed around bowls with 3 different categories written on strips of paper - one bowl for names, one for items and one for locations. Now, after we had picked out our three selections, we were informed that in order to "survive" to the end of the weekend, we would have to kill each other off. It was an interesting move for a party, murder, and it certainly put us all on edge! The idea was that we would have to brutally bludgeon our "mark" with our designated "murder weapon" in the location we were assigned, and so their assassination target would pass to us. The person with the most murders to their name by the end of the weekend would be the winner. We were told this at dinner, and I can tell you - noone would accept ANYTHING from anyone else for the rest of the evening: "Hey Sam, pass me the salt", "Oh, I bet you'd love that wouldn't you - here I am passing the salt and then BAM, I'm lying salted in the gutter, dehydrated to death - I'm watching you..."

My mark was my friend Becky, and my weapon was to be a mobile phone - easy freaking peasy. Unfortunately, I picked a freaking doozy of a location. Off the hotel grounds. By the time I found this out it was already well past dark, and I'm not sure how my friend would feel about me luring his girlfriend down into the night in order to murder her with a mobile phone. I had to bide my time, but also, I had to keep an eye open because someone would have picked out my name, and would be baying for my blood! And to make matters worse, Becky was being super-paranoid about it, she wouldn't even accept a sparkler from me - asking that I put it down on the step so she could pick it up!

As the evening wore on, friends were picked off, girlfriend was taken out by a shoe wielded by my friend Ed. She didn't mind, it meant he had to deal with her mark, which was to somehow take out a guy she'd never met with a book. Ed didn't get very far with that either, no sooner had he killed the girl, then he was assassinated by Rob and his oh-so-mightier-than-a-sword pen, in the girls toilet - no less. We decided not to enquire as to why Ed and Rob were hanging out in the girl's loos. Ditt fell foul to a box of biscuits, Shirley to a teacup and Josh was powerless against Sam's pringles tube. But I persevered. In fact, I made it till the morning - the fresh morning air had never smelled so sweet! I didn't even mind that it was infused with the smell of 4 twenty-something guys all sleeping in sleeping bags and exuding noxious gasses - I was alive! Now to enact my dastardly plan:

A Sincere Christmas Message

I doubt I'll have a chance to post later today or tomorrow so I'm going to take this opportunity to say something before the year is out:

To those of you who've just stumbled upon my humble little patch of the 'net and to those regular viewers (do I have regular viewers?) I hope you all have an amazing Christmas and a brilliant New Year. I have to admit I will be glad to leave this year behind - as a family I know this has been the single most trying year of our lives, and my blood boils when I think about those we have lost and how pointless it all had seemed at the time. Since June I think we've had to learn to drag ourselves along, even if it means by sheer force of will. But, I hope, we've emerged the other side of what happened in Africa now and I think we are beginning to get on with our lives and, with any luck, 2011 will pass without incident.

Thankyou for taking the time to come here over the past two months and listen to my ramblings. So, there's no sarcasm or veiled wit in this post. Its just a pure and simple wish for, above all, a Happy New Year.


Merry Christmas.



Will
xx