[GW2] Consort-Ya-Self-Out

So - are we supposed to sympathise in any way with the Consortium? I mean, the way the quests are set up in Southsun its as if we are: we have to protect the Consortium victims from Settlers just as much as we have to protect the Settlers from the Consortium. I also seem to spend a lot of my time as a makeshift riot policeman - wailing on angry settler rioters when I'd much rather be fighting by their side.

The consortium gave them a place to stay, but only if they agree never to leave and keep schtum about the rather crabby wildlife which is currently rampant on the isles. Sounds like a bit of a bum deal.

Plus, this guy gives you like 200% magic find. How can you not like him?

[GW2] Eagerly Awaiting Observation

In my last few months of Guild Wars, having completed God Walking Amongst Mere Mortals, pretty much the only reason I would log into the game would be to hit B and watch the monthly GvG championships. It was like a game-within-a-game, drastically different to the PvE game, infinitely complex and with it's own tropes, trends and memes, controversies, heroes and villains.

Watching the pros go about their business each month taught me how to do da PvPs: I never played GvG myself, but I used the skills I saw the top players using whenever I entered Random arenas, alliance battles or hero battles, and I think I was better for it.

I'm hoping that the introduction of observation mode in GW2 will allow me to absorb some of the new skills which have been incubating in the sPvP community since launch. I can imagine that there are countless nuances of the genre which just haven't made it out of the community which surrounds it simply because n00bs like myself haven't been able to hit B and stick our noses in to watch how it's done.

[GW2] Mega Boss Nerf

If you've been playing Guild Wars 2 over the past few weeks you'll know the dramatic effect the recent changes to the world event chest drop tables have had on the community.

For a lot of people, the entire game has become about hopping from event to event, on multiple characters and across multiple servers (via guesting). Seeing as you now get at least a rare, if not several or an exotic or two from each chest (and then there's the rest of the loot from mobs, the event rewards and the other chest drops too) it is incredibly lucrative.

On the plus side this has pushed ectoplasm prices down to a more manageable level, on the down side these events are now completely gridlocked and lagging like a motherflipper.
ArenaNet's fix is to separate the guaranteed rare drop from the rest of the chest loot into a daily chest style reward which can only be gained once per account per day. You'll still get the event chest, it just will no longer guarantee you a rare item. ArenaNet are yet to confirm whether this event chest still has the chance of dropping rares - much like the event chest used to do.


What this means for the current situation is that it will effectively make hopping from server to server to maximise your reward across several characters less profitable, and not worth the effort without the incentive of a guaranteed rare item. This, in turn, should ease some of the lag and overflow problems players have been having.

I think this was a necessary change - something had to change anyway, and my idea was always just: "no chests for guests!" (it rhymes, so it must be good!) but this is a far more elegant solution to the problem - which is probably why they're the devs and I'm just a lowly serf. The situation couldn't stay as it was; players weren't playing the events across 8 characters and 3 servers for the fun of the event, they were doing it to grind out rare drops, and this is precisely the kind of gameplay ANet want to try to discourage. Noone wanted the loot tables changed back to the way they were before, noone wanted to start restricting guesting,

Yes, in the short term the prices of ectoplasm has skyrocketed again and precursor weapons have once again risen another notch out of reach, but there are other ways to bring the prices back down - and hopefully this will mean that instead of grinding Shatterer, Tequatl, Frostmaw and The Shadow Behemoth, players might start to spread out to the other world events like the Temples in Orr.