Mystic Worlds

GW2: Back on my Honeymoon

My Mesmer and newly finished crafting professions have me back into the honeymoon phase in GW2. The class provides better support and versatility for the aspects of game-play I focus on at max level. Plus her animations are flashy and her gear options are much more feminine, which adds to the overall appeal.

Harvesting on EZMode

I find harvesting nodes a relaxing thing to do. In most MMOs, its how I like to end my gaming sessions – bit of unwinding. Most of my harvesting is to support crafting but I don’t mind farming profitable items for resale.

The Mesmer class is much more adept at convenient harvesting in high level zones. She has a nice arsenal of skills for “Don’t mind me, I’m just passing through.” She has sweet sweet anti-combat maneuvers too. A typical configuration for me is Scepter + Focus, Sword + Torch, Decoy, Boons, + Boon Durations and Mass Invisibility.

The value of the Focus run buff is a no-brainer. It helps me bypass mobs and traverse the landscape more quickly. I use the #5 iDefender Phantasm to take aggro before I get close.  Usually the mobs nearby don't even notice me. Other times, I cast it if the mob is on top of the node or notices me as I’m harvesting. In either situation, the Defender Phantasm takes aggro and whittles the mob down while I’m harvesting. Depending on the mob, I can choose to continue on to the next location or kill it for a chance at useful loot or salvage.

The Torch is mostly for the Prestige skill which is a form of invisibility. I pop it and keep running. If I’m still in range of mobs or have aggro, I’ll follow up with Decoy and disappear again. It's also the only time I like have a melee weapon on the Mesmer.  If stuff gets in my face while I'm harvesting it's tag you're it, slash-slash, you're dead.

I save Mass Invisibility for hastening by a large swarm of NPCs or as a “hail Mary” escape. I also love running with the Signet of Inspiration for the random boons. The speed boost pops regularly and combined with Signet of Midnight for improved boon duration, it helps to length all of my combat avoidance tricks. To complement the Signets, I adjust my trait skills to reduce the refresh rates as well.

These options combined, really improve the efficiency of my harvesting runs. I thought the Guardian was cool with the almost constant run speed buff when you trait for “Shouts” and use a staff. Her ability to ignore things beating on her while harvesting or by casting spirit weapons to fight pesky mobs was convenient. Even though there’s no danger of being downed, there’s the harvesting interrupts which are annoying. The Mesmer however, can simply avoid the drama altogether in most cases, making her a more efficient harvesting class.

GW2 - A daily achievement system I can enjoy

I Ain't Doin No Damn Dailies!

My love-hate relationship with Blizzard's World of Warcraft blames them for the proliferation of daily quests in MMOs.  I mean really, you want me to pay a subscription to log in every day and repeat quest content?  I see, repeating instances isn't enough repetition.  You've got to be out of your damn mind.  I REFUSED to do daily quests when they were introduced in WOW and ticked as just one more reason I was done and moved on to other games. 

I cringed when Warhammer Online listed daily quests as a part of their feature development.  However, Paul Barnett promised us it wasn't going to be the same run of the mill.  I was appeased by their concept of implicit quest objective completion.  Meaning, if you have to kill your way through a throng of bears to reach a quest-giver whose request was going to be to kill some bears, they'd acknowledge the fact that you'd just killed a slew of bears getting there!!  WAR tried to implement the idea but the in-game realization was far and too few.

I knew Guild Wars 2 was going to have achievements, including the dreaded daily quests.  I paid it no attention.  I don't do dailies.  Even in a no subscription game, I'm not running back and forth to the same flippin' NPCs every day to do the same crap.  Ain't no way!  Color me very surprised when my first Daily Achievement completion flashed up on my screen with it's jiggling-caching treasue chest animation.  I still didn't bother to figure out what I'd done to complete it since I wasn't going to intentionally repeat the steps again.  I finally succumbed to curiosity when I managed to complete a daily quest almost every day without knowing how or why.

GW2 - The Wait is Over!!

I was back on the Support Forums looking through the thread about issues with Email Authentication and saw someone say, it was somehow turned off for them now and they could log in.  I raced to my account page and it worked for me too.  Tested logging into the game and am golden!!  Character there, exactly where'd I'd left her with all her worldly goods in tact!

OMG - Don't care how this was resolved - bug or one of the other ideas floating around about common threads such as many of us having GW1 accounts that used same address.  I hadn't played GW1 in so long, I'd forgotten about it and that fact that email was the same.  Or perhaps the CS Gods smiled on us today and  simply disabled the feature for everyone with an open ticket but they haven't gotten around to updating the actual tickets yet.

As for me, I've updated my email to something else, tested it and am good.  I closed all of my tickets myself so the team can focus on players still having issues.  If this was the work of the CS team or someone taking pity on us today, THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!

GW2 Waiting Game Day 7 - Authentication Email like Herpes?

Very disheartening and to me at least, the Support Forum response in the thread about people having this particular issues was a bit cavalier.  People impacted by the issue don't care if "you just don't see the issue..."  State of the Game Update says the feature can be disabled and will be disabled, if requested. We need to "think that one through", as in, having email authentication removed for security reasons????  

Honestly, WTF do I care about account security if I can't access my account or play the game!!!  I think my head is going to explode!  Players impacted by this issue can't even post on the forums because that also wants you to authenticate yourself via emails we're not receiving.  I had to log in using a different account.  

I don't care what the issue is anymore.  I'll devise my own safe system. Maybe I'll triple link emails - what the hell ever.  But I can do NOTHING until it's disabled on my account. Nope, all I can do is continue to wait.

It's like some of the people handling tickets aren't insync with the State of the Game instructions.  In the very first ticket, I provided a new secure email to use but all that happened was a password reset.

I have a new theory about GW2 Authentication Email.  It's like herpes.  Once you turn it on...

 

GW2 - Day 7 of my email authentication vigil dawns

UPDATE: As of about 15 minutes ago (~4PM ET) I attempted to log into my account and Email Authenticaion was in deed, turned off.  A post from a player in the Email Authentication Issues thread on the Support Forums prompted me to try again.  They'd tried their account out of the blue and it was off for them, so I quickly tried the same.  EUREKA!  A few additional details here and a BIG THANKS to whoever was responsible.

Today the State of the Game wiki says if you have a hacked account or issue blocking log-in that was submitted before Sept 2nd and your ticket has not been handled, submit a new ticket.  They link what steps to follow to help prioritize your ticket appropriately.  *sigh* On the surface it seems simple enough but not exactly. 

Which Way Should I go George?

If you follow the State of the Game wiki steps for the Customer Support section, where is says what batch of tickets they've moved passed and what to do if you've been missed and have a game access issue, it says to do one thing.  Okay, my issue prevents me from getting into GW2 so I fit that description.

However, if you read further down and check my explicit problem, not receiving "Email Authentication" those steps are completely different for categorizing your issue.

Today I've doubled-down and have done both for good measure.  As much as I hate continuing to flood their system with support tickets, I see no other recourse when my issue continues to remain unresolved for so long a time and log-in blocking issues are stated as being 1st priority tickets.  

Kuncklehead Why So Many Tickets??

Everytime the State of the Game Update says they've moved passed a certain date of tickets and if yours wasn't fixed you should submit a new ticket, that's exactly what I do.  Will today be my lucky day??

 

GW2 - Oh, it burns us, Precious!

Had a great time talking to the Sisters from No Prisioners No Mercy podcast about GuildWars 2.  How it burns that I'm currently locked out of GW2 waiting for resolution of an issue with email authentication, as in, someone PLEASE DISABLE IT FROM MY GAWD DAMN ACCOUNT!  OMG, 6 days and counting for my Support Ticket to address the problem.

Listen to the podcast here.

GW2 - DAY 6 Waiting for Email Authentication Issue Resolution

At this point, this feels pretty incredulous to me.  I'm going to count down just how long it takes for this to be resolved for me to be able to access my acct and the game, post the mass enabling of Email Authentication.  Gory details here, if you're up for a wall of text.  :-)

 

GW: Growing on Me

I jumped on Guild Wars the other night.  I hadn’t been on in a couple of weeks.  Short on time, I didn’t get much accomplished.  I’m not in a hurry to enter pre-Searing, so I wandered around Lakeside and picked up a couple of simple quests.

Observing the countryside I realized that the graphics were growing on me.  I liked them better now.  I don’t like them as much as EQ2 or even the flat stylistic graphics of WOW, but they’re not so bad.  I’d enjoy them even more without the constant halo effect.  It’s a bit over-used and often makes me feel like the graphics are out of focus. 

Granted, the landscapes are intricate.  However, they feel so very hollow.  Even with the terrific mob A.I. and abundance of NPCs, it still feels pretty lifeless.  I attribute this to the fact that GW heavily instanced.  This makes the quest areas lonely even with five players in a group.  I’m glad the graphics are growing on me.  I’m not playing much these days but when I do, imagery is important.

GW Week Toon Round Up

This week was my GW toon week.  Although I did participate in two raids on WOW, BWL and AQ, the rest of my time was spent leveling my toons on Guild Wars.  I didn’t mean to have two toons this early.  I mistakenly left pre-Searing Ascalon prematurely and wanted to see what I’d missed.  I’ve found that in most MMOs, the landscapes become darker and harsher as you level.  I guess that is to be expected.  However, I like the shire-type towns, lush groves and plush countryside quest areas reserved for new character questing.  To see what I had missed, I decided to start another toon.  I’ll go into more detail about each toon in a different post.  I haven’t decided on exact builds.  I need to do research first and learn more about group dynamics and PVP. 

My main toon is Saylah Rai, a level 8 Elementalist/Mesmer.  Hired henchmen at her side, Saylah completed several Charr related quests this week.  Some of the quests were easy.  Others were difficult because of the long run west without the ability to portal to nearer cities.  With Piken Square as my most western outpost, the run to Diessa Lowlands is a long and treacherous run for a level 8.  I need to acquire the jump to Grendich Courthouse to ease the burden.  That will be the first thing I work on accomplishing the next time I log this toon.

Illia Rai is my alternate toon.  She is a level 4 Necromancer/Monk.  Although I haven’t worked out the details of the build, she will be a Minion Master.  I like the idea of being able to raise a mini army from the dead to add to the offensive power my group.  As a Monk secondary, I will be able to heal myself and my minions during battle or assist the primary healer.  So far life is good with this toon.  I’m taking my time and exploring the areas I skipped on Saylah.  I’ve found lots of free loot stashes and chests throughout the countryside.  If you like the sunnier side of questing, be sure to check out the locals in Green Hills and Lakeside.

 

Beware of Sir Tydus

When you finish designing a new role-playing character in Guild Wars, you are placed into Ascalon City.  Upon arriving you are guided to your first quest giver, who sends you out of the city, and into Lakeside Country.  There you’ll meet up with your primary profession trainer for a series of quests that get your game-play started.

Accustomed to playing MMOs, I gather as many quests as possible before heading out too far.  This allows me to accomplish several objectives along the way and saves a huge amount to time by not having to back-track to the same areas repeatedly.  I also stop to slay mobs within my level for some easy experience points and extra loot.  I was leveling in this fashion on my Elementalist/Mesmer and having a good old time.  I randomly pick up quests and often don't read the quest until I have time to work on my next set of objectives.

Returning to the city to sell some loot and take a break, I saw Sir Tydus.  He was standing on a rock surrounded by a dozen or so players.  As the players approached and spoke with him, he showered  them in a blinding light and applauded.  Curious, I sauntered over to see what was going on.  When I reached him I noticed that he had a quest available for me too.  Anxious for my share of game glory, I accepted the proffered quest.  Blinding flash of light and a rousing round of applause later, I was standing in an arena getting my ass kicked.

I promptly died and was resurrected into a post apocalyptic Ascalon.  I now know that where I had been questing, was called Pre-Searing Ascalon.  Talking to Sir Tydus had sent me into the Academy for training – err, in my case an ass whipping.  And having joined the army, there was no way of returning back to the former quest area.  Boo!  I still had quests to complete for my professions and specialty items, which were now lost to me.  Eventually I was told that I could go and buy the missing skills.  As a lowbie and a bit of a pauper, that was an expensive option but the only choice which remained.

So for you other noobs out there just starting to play GW, be forewarned and stay clear of Sir Tydus until you’re ready to leave the comfort of your newbie home.  Do not accept quests to join the war effort, unless you’re ready to leave the gentle rolling hills and lush pastures or Pre-Searing Ascalon.  I’m here for the adventuring and role-playing, and want to experience as much of the content as possible.  I’m going to roll a Necro/Monk soon than I had originally planned, so that I can go back to see the content and quests I missed on my Ele/Mes