Guild Wars 2 | Superior Realities

HotS release date:

Of course, after I write a nice long post about Guild Wars 2, Blizzard goes and dumps the release date for Heart of the Swarm on us. March 12, 2013. Mark your calendars!

Guild Wars 2: The Lost Shores

The first major content patch for Guild Wars 2, The Lost Shores, is just around the corner, and it’s bringing big things to the world of Tyria.

Free trial — get your invite here:

One of the biggest pieces of news is the addition of a free trial for the game. But this is different from your usual MMO free trial. This trial is only active during a limited time period, and it is invitation-only. You need to be invited by someone already in the game.

The trial begins on November 15th and runs until the 18th. Each GW2 player will be provided three codes to send to those they wish to invite, but it is mentioned that supplies of the codes are limited, so it’s possible some may not get to invite their friends if they’re slow.

I’ve already promised one of my codes to an acquaintance from WoW, but that leaves two more I don’t know what to do with, so I’m offering them to you, the readers of this blog. If you’ve been curious about Guild Wars 2, now is your chance to try it.

If you’re interested, I recommend you go to the “Hire Me” link at the top of the blog and use the form there to send me a message. This will give me access to your email address without you needing to post it publicly. I can’t send you an access code without your email address.

Don’t worry; I won’t spam you. I’m all out of Viagra anyway. 😛

I don’t know how many, if any, of my readers will want to try GW2, but it will be a case of “first come, first serve,” and there are only two codes for me to give, so I recommend acting fast if you want in.

Cue controversy:

As for the content of The Lost Shores patch, it looks to bring a lot of interesting stuff, including a special one-time series of events starting on the 16th that will introduce a new villain race and the new Lost Shores zone.

These events will supposedly scale players up to level 80 as the Halloween content did, so anyone can participate regardless of level or gear. Yes, that includes those of you doing the free trial. I can’t think of a better intro to the game for newcomers.

Feelings are mixed on these one-time events ArenaNet seems so fond of. I see both sides, personally. On the one hand, it’s pretty amazing to be there for them and see the world change before your eyes, but on the other, it really sucks if you can’t log in on those days for whatever reason.

Lost Shores will also add a new PvP map and a new dungeon with the rather bizarre name of “Fractals of the Mists.”

One of the new Karka monsters from the Lost Shores update for Guild Wars 2 This dungeon has triggered what is perhaps the first truly big controversy for Guild Wars 2. Fractals offers a new tier of gear, Ascended, that is more powerful than the current exotic (epic, in WoW terms) gear. It also has unique “infusion” upgrade slots that will be necessary to deal with new dungeon mechanics.

This is something ArenaNet swore up and down GW2 would never have: power creep, the dreaded gear treadmill. This has sent the fan base into fits of screaming rage, and perhaps with good cause.

A lot of people, myself included, were attracted to GW2 precisely because of its relative lack of gear progression. A lot of players are sick to death of this cheap way of gating content.

Now, maybe this isn’t so bad as we think it is, but right now, I don’t see how that could be. Unless this is the only form of gear progression they’re ever going to add and Ascended gear will eventually be available to any playstyle, it pretty much goes against everything ArenaNet promised GW2 would be.

I’m not saying Ascended gear will make me quit on the spot, but depending on how things pan out, I may not stick with GW2 as long as I’d intended.

Fashion:

But on to happier matters.

I have a confession to make: I am completely, hopelessly addicted to the gear customization in Guild Wars 2. It’s even worse than my transmog addiction in WoW.

If you like gear customization, this game really is a dream come true. While it can be a little hard to find a variety of skins in the course of normal play, it doesn’t take very much effort to vastly increase the available pool of looks. You just need to know where to look.

For instance, I recently discovered that you can use transmutation stones to acquire the skin of any piece of gear below level 80 (you need fine stones for level 80) regardless of what your character’s level is. Just buy a poorly itemized (and thus cheap) high level piece and transmute it onto your dull-looking low level gear.

Add to that the incredible variety of armor dyes, and the sky’s the limit. My main alts, a warrior and a mesmer, are barely out of their starting zones, but both look as good as many max level characters. I almost think I’m just rolling alts so I can try out new looks.

I don’t know what it is about video games that makes me such a fashionista. I couldn’t care less about clothes in the real world, but yet I’ve poured embarrassing amounts of time and gold into finding the perfect looks for my characters, and equally embarrassing amounts of time looking at the outfits of other characters on GuildWars2Guru. The diversity of looks you can create in this game is stunning.

Okay, another confession: I’m mostly just writing this as an excuse to show off my characters’ gear. Stylish bunch, aren’t they?

Heart of the Swarm beta update:

A few more weeks and many beta patches have gone by, and I thought it was time for me to once again share my thoughts on the beta for the next Starcraft II expansion.

It’s been a roller-coaster couple of weeks for us Protoss players, as every one of our new units has received significant changes. This is most true of the oracle, which must be the bane of the balance team’s existence at this point.

Not only has the oracle lost every single ability it was first previewed with, it has also lost several abilities it had received since then. Its current abilities are pulsar beam (a channeled attack that does very high damage to buildings), time warp (an AoE slow), and revelation (which grants vision of enemy units).

I didn’t mind the old abilities as much as most, and I am little concerned about time warp overlapping with force field, but I’m inclined to see these as positive changes. They make the oracle more versatile and skill-intensive, and it’s still a unique form of harassment.

My main complaint is that it lost its detection. Protoss desperately needs mobile detection from something other than observers if we’re ever going to see significant build diversity in the early game. The mothership core has received a detection ability, but I’m not sure that’s enough.

Speaking of the ol’ mommaship core, it has also been heavily redesigned multiple times. Long story short, it’s lost its economic abilities and been untethered from the nexus, and is now intended to be viable as a core spellcaster in armies.

I don’t know how to feel about this. I really liked the original design of the mothership core, but I also appreciate the new opportunities it now provides, such as early harassment. My main concern is that it’s too fragile to be a front line caster, especially since you can only have one at a time.

Finally, the tempest has been buffed, mainly through cost reduction and the loss of its fleet beacon requirement. I’m not sure this goes far enough, but it’s definitely a step in the right direction. The tempest did not work as an endgame capitol ship. It makes more sense as early-mid game harassment.

On the Terran front, the main news is that the widow mine was redesigned. No longer a suicide unit, it is now a burrowed rocket launcher with a lengthy cooldown between shots.

The general consensus among non-Terran players is that widow mines are stupidly overpowered right now, and the popularity of the “get as many mines as you can as fast as you can” strategy seems to support this.

To be fair, though, I have seen many cases of Terrans going heavy widow mines and still losing, so maybe it’s not as bad as we think. Its ability to hit cloaked units even without detection needs to die in a fire, though. That’s just ridiculous.

The only other significant Terran news is that battle hellions have been renamed “hellbats,” which may be a tacit admission that they’re just firebats 2.0.

Zerg hasn’t gotten any significant changes in recent times. I really don’t get Zerg, so any of my thoughts on them should be taken with a grain of salt, but I’d be inclined to say this is because Zerg doesn’t need big changes. Their new units and mechanics all worked pretty well from the outset.

There is some concern that the viper isn’t particularly useful, and it is true that I haven’t seen many players use it in the matches I’ve watched, but I kind of wonder if people just haven’t learned to incorporate it well yet. Abduct still seems quite devastating when used properly.

Overall, I think all these changes are largely positive. Even if widow mines are ridiculous right now, at least they’re an interesting design. The warhound was overpowered, but it was also incredibly dull and uninspired. The widow mine is a completely new mechanic in Starcraft.

There have also been a number of UI updates, social improvements, and other peripheral changes to the beta in recent times, including the long-awaited clan support and a new leveling system.

Starcraft II devs are best devs:

I’d also like to just take a moment to praise the developers and their interactions with the community during this beta. Dustin Browder and David Kim (Rock and Dayvie on the forums) have been incredibly open and accessible, explaining in detail the reasoning behind all of their decisions.

They often offer insight into the testing processes that have led them to their conclusions, and they still encourage players to do their own testing and share their findings. Sometimes, they’ll respond to a thread just to thank players for some especially detailed feedback.

Meanwhile, Brian Kindregan, lead writer for Heart of the Swarm, has been answering questions from the Starcraft II Ask CDev Q & A and has shown remarkable humility and honesty in owning up to the failures of Wings of Liberty’s storyline, earning praise from even the most embittered QQer.

I generally hold pretty high opinions of most of Blizzard’s developers (yes, even Jay Wilson), but clearly, Starcraft II devs are best devs. Their honesty, humility, and accessibility are unmatched in my experience.

Socialization in Guild Wars 2:

As promised, my thoughts on the social interactions in Guild Wars 2 have been posted at WhatMMO. It’s odd that what is probably the most social-friendly MMO in history can also feel very lonely at times.

But is this is really an issue, or do we have no one to blame but ourselves?

Superior Realities

Tag Archives: Guild Wars 2

GW2: Free Trial, Fits, and Fashion + HotS Release Date

HotS Beta Update + Guild Wars 2 Socialization

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