Swimming Sessions in Guild Wars 2

I watched recently a french video about the useless activities that the players in Guild Wars 2 can do if they want.  One of them consists of jumping from a high place and do the same moves that the olympic swimmers do in competitions.  I had to go in Lion’s Arch anyway so I decided to give that one a try.

When you get in that area your character suddenly wears a swimsuit and a pair of glasses.  And when you jump, you get access to certain skills allowing your alt to do the same moves than the ones in competitions.

Here is my Asura guardian who looks all professional with his mini-pet golem that I got from my Hall of Monument in Guild Wars.

swimingplace

My biggest disappointments about Guild Wars 2

The dyes

We were told that the dyes we would unlock would be account based, so those who play many characters like me would be able to access all their dyes.  And there is a LOT of dyes to unlock, 400 in total.  Obviously something that would take a LOT of time.  Well, in all beta events the dyes were indeed account based, including the big media week-end beta event where journalists in gaming industry were invited, including smaller guys like TotalBiscuit, who confirmed to the world, in different medias, that dyes were indeed account based, that ArenaNet follows their promises.

It’s only in the very last beta events that suddenly dyes were not account based anymore.  Everyone thought it was a bug and reported it as a bug it to ArenaNet.  Up until someone showed up in their official forums to tell us that ArenaNet had suddenly changed their mind, that now dyes are character based and gave us the most ridiculous reason why : to give us a sense of progression.  Most people on the forums were angry and did not agree at all with that and wanted their account based dyes back.

I just want to mention that publically dyes are still account based because ArenaNet has not put on their website or blog that they’ve changed their mind, that they BROKE a promise, only other places have mentioned it, so that means that someone who check the beta events articles and videos, especially the journalists ones, and quickly check their website, will have a hard wake up call when they realize that sneakily dyes are not account based anymore.

On top of that, the dyes that drop are not identified so that means you don’t even know what color it is.  Well, I don’t plan to play that gambling game.  I plan to just NOT identify said dyes up until either the dyes become account based again or up until there is a way to identify the dyes before unlocking the dyes.  Also, l will NOT buy dyes in the ingame store either.  Again, it’s a gambling game.  None of these are fun is any way whatsoever.

Ironically, some short time after ArenaNet changed their account based dye system to character based system in closed beta, ArenaNet had the nerve to write a blog article called Is it Fun? Colin Johanson on How ArenaNet Measures Success.  The nerve!!!  In other word, while they were working on the game they made sure to put emphasize on fun and get rid of not fun stuff.

Well guess what ArenaNet, the current character based gambling dye system is NOT fun at all. NOT FUN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  And multiply that NOT FUN by how many alts we have.  NOT FUN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WAKE UP!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Mesmer

In Guild Wars mesmer was the most awesome coolest fun original class.  It was too much fun to play.  And in PvP even better.  It was so much fun tossing Ineptitude on melee classes and Backfire on casters, and watching them kill themselves.  The most fun PvP I’ve had was playing a mesmer in alliance battles in Guild Wars.

In Guild War 2 most of the classes have gained new stuff, for the ranger more pets to have, for the warrior ranged weapons, necromancer death shroud, assassin a western look and guns.  Mesmer in the other hand is not a mesmer anymore, I don’t know what it is but it’s NOT a mesmer.  Someone wrote a better post about the sad situation about the mesmer in Guild Wars 2, here: Guild Wars 2: How ArenaNet ruined the Mesmer.

All I’m going to say is that I fully agree with the author.

2009

As I write this, I have two songs in my head: 1990 by Jean Leloup and 2001 by Melissa Etheridge.

How fast time has passed by. 2009 is at the corner and I’ve done my best at not thinking about it, and especially not thinking about some upcoming projects. I tend to be insominiac and I avoid sources of insomnia for my well being and excitment is one of them.

The Secret World
A few words have come out recently about the game, at the beginning of 2009, there should be finally an official website and a PR. Some parts of the game are near completion, others still in development and right now they’re implementing RPG and combat system to the game.

I really hope this time Funcom will have learned their lessons and deliver a well polished finished game with The Secret World. The fact that the leads behind The Secret World are not the same as Age of Conan is promising but with their reputation pretty much ruined when Age of Conan came out, they should make their best to be forgiven with The Secret World.

Guild Wars 2

At first we were told we would get beta news end of 2008 but it was changed to 2009. The only informations about Guild Wars 2 are scarce and no information about the game has come up since. I fell in love with the game when it came out may 2005, a genuine fantasy world and lore, one of the rare few that is not heavily inspired by Tolkien. The story of Guild Wars 2 happens 250 years after what happens in the expansion Eyes of the North. Unlike the first Guild Wars, many races will be playable in Guild Wars 2 and my favorite race is among the short list: the Charr (Link 1 + Link 2). The Dwarves will become extinct and won’t be a part of Guild Wars 2, so their only Tolkien element in Guild Wars will be non-existant in Guild Wars 2. So far, the official list of playable races has five races: Humans, Charr, Norns, Asuras and Silvaris. Whether there will be more races is unknown. The game will have no monthly fee again and apparently it will be persistent with some instances left for missions and dungeons.

So while we will get the same areas, after 250 years things will be entirely different and we will have to rediscover again the beloved areas.
Considering ArenaNet has done a very good job with Guild Wars I have a lot of hope with Guild Wars 2, they delivered a top notch well polished game with constant support, listened to their community of players even without having an official forums (many suggestions done by the players on fan forums were implemened in Guild Wars), etc. And I hope as well the graphics and art style will be even more gorgeous then they aready are.

More links:

Link 1

Link 2

This is a past blog entry from my gaming blog on Multiply.