Big Bada Boom

Tanks, turrets and flame throwers; that seems to have been the theme last week. As anticipated, I didn’t get much gaming in but that’s not to say I didn’t get any in. Even though my feed reader keeps filling up faster than I can go through it I did get some game time in. Though no WvW for the BWE.

Didn’t I have an empty garage slot?

I started my garage cleaning in World of Tanks, and immediately started filling it back up. USA TDs, here I come. I’ve been seeing a lot M8A1s zipping around and think that might be fun thing to try so I bought a T82 and started at it. But that’s not my main focus right now. The hit-and-run flanker play-style of the French lights and mediums appeals to me. That’s how I play my PzIII and M4 so the prospect of a tank actually designed for that play style is enticing. Last week I moved from the AMX38 to the AMX40 so it’s just one more tier to go. I have heard that there are many people out there who assume that French lights are the same as the other nations and berate players who use their French lights as force multipliers instead of scouts. Hell, I even got called a noob for the crapy radio (that was fully upgraded) and slow speed of my AMX40.

Rift Wars: Knights of Telara.

Yeah, I didn’t get a single chance to login to either SWTOR or Rift. This week I’d like to finish up Nar Shaddaa on my Assassin and, since I’ve been itching to play them, dust off my 37 Shield Spec Vanguard and 22 Sawbones Scoundrel. I’m still interested in going back to Rift for a little while in July so I’d like to roll up a Warrior and see where that takes me.

Go to plan B.

A typical WvW score board during BWE 2.

First the bad news, none of my plans for Guild Wars 2’s second BWE came to fruition. Now the good news, I got to play more than anticipated and had a lot of fun with something I wasn’t expecting.

As I posted on Saturday, there wasn’t much WvW to be had on my shard: Tarnished Coast. We dominated WvW by what I can only assume was shear force of numbers, since the one time I saw action there it was just a zerg, and every time I opened the WvW pannel it was all us.

So Instead of jumping into WvW I ended up just running around and PvE-ing most of the time. During the first weekend I created one each of the four professions that I was most interested: Guardian, Mesmer, Engineer and Warrior. My intention from the start was to play a Guardian and I enjoyed it as much as I thought I would. I also greatly enjoyed the Mesmer and decided that would be one of my day-1 professions. The Warrior and Engineer didn’t impress me as much. I enjoyed both but walked away thinking that neither would be a big focus for me.

My Engineer running through Divinity’s Reach

But there was something about the Engineer that called me back. In other games I’ve always been turned off by engineer type classes but then enjoy them if I try so I thought I’d give Engineer another shot. I’m glad I did. Once I started to get the hang of switching between kits while fighting and choosing the right kit to complement my weapon and situation everything started to fall into place. I found myself ignoring the hearts and just fighting stuff for the fun of it. It was one of the few times I’ve ever grinded just for the fun of combat.

Things were a little different in sPvP. On Sunday afternoon I got around to playing some structured PvP and could not get into the grove with the Engineer. I fumbled around and got destroyed, contributing virtually nothing to the group. The Warrior was just the opposite, everything just clicked once I entered the Mists. I had a blast and did well with the Guardian too, even if I did get a little cocky when I tried to take on half the enemy team by myself. So a tentative plan for the next BWE event is to figure out the Engineer in PvP and give the Warrior a shot in PvE.

Being a beta still one would expect a certain level of roughness but the game was running incredibly smooth. The only hitch I encountered was connection issues on Sunday evening. Based on general chat it seemed that I wasn’t the only one. Over the course of a half hour or so the problems not only persisted but expanded, culminating in a crash to desktop. After the crash I started the client back up and everything was smooth again. Hopefully they’ll get that issued ironed out.

Looking back it seems that I played a lot more than I thought I did last week. But maybe it wasn’t the quantity of gaming, just the quality.

Give Peas a Chance

“Who does ArenaNet think they’re fooling? Sylvari are obviously just plant elves.” When I first read about Guild War 2’s Sylvari I quickly dismissed them as mere plant elves. I might be eating my own words. When ArenaNet had Sylvari Week I thought the redesign was beautiful but I still just saw them as plant elves. My mind might be changing.

After the BWE I was jonesing for some Guild Wars 2. It started simply enough: hitting the “F” key every time I walked up to a quest giver, wondering why my Jedi Knight wouldn’t dodge. But it kept growing, eventually I just decided to pick up a copy of Ghosts of Ascalon. It was a relaxing, easy read that proved to be an excellent introduction to Tyria for a Guild Wars neophyte such as myself. The book gives a sort of Cliffs Notes version of Tyria’s history through different characters explaining “their” side of the story, most in a human vs Charr manner. It also introduces readers to the four playable races in the members of the party of adventures at the center of the story. Each character seems to be a poster child for their race: the down-but-not-out human, the battled-hardened Charr, the vivacious Norn, the arrogant Asura, and finally the inquisitive and adventurous Sylvari: Killeen.

I may have been blinded by elf hatred but Killeen isn’t what I was expecting from the Sylvari. She is intelligent but with a child-like sense of wonder, inquisitive and adventurous with a thirst for knowledge. Best of all she has a complete disregard for social norms in the name of curiosity. She doesn’t mean harm or insult through her eccentricities but that doesn’t stop her from relishing in them. While her teammates are apprehensive about encountering ghosts, as a necromancer she’s overjoyed at the opportunity. She knows that they don’t want to be used as her undead minions if they die but she doesn’t fully understand their reasoning behind that request. These aspects of her personality intrigue me and, as an explorer Bartle-type, I can relate to her sense of wonder and thirst of knowledge.

If Killeen is a model of the Sylvari, I may be finding myself playing one sooner than anticipated. I’m hoping that the next BWE will add the race so I can grab a better picture of the their zeitgeist and see for myself. I still plan to start out with a Norn Guardian but I might just roll up a Sylvari Mesmer along side of him.