As the title implies, this week I spent a lot of time with Guild Wars 2. Well, I wouldn’t say a lot of time, because I did still play other games, but that’s going to be the focal point of this post, because I finished up the playthrough of the last game I had been focusing on. I also have been playing MOBAs as usual, but there really isn’t a whole lot to add there. I will however, touch upon the small stuff first before getting to the GW2 stuff.

I finished my playthrough of the Dragonborn DLC for Skyrim this week. You can read the ending here if you’ve been keeping up, or visit the Ongoing Series page to start from the beginning.

If you listened to the latest episode of Couch Podtatoes, you’ll recall at the beginning when we were discussing what we’ve been playing, I mentioned my two favorite MOBAs, League of Legends and Awesomenauts. In Awesomenauts they released a new ‘naut called Scoop, and at first I really didn’t like him. I tried him a few times and had no success, and most of the time when I had someone playing him on my team, they wouldn’t be very good with him either. I did see quite a few Scoop players on enemy teams that were rather good though, and after a while I decided to give him another try. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it all clicked and I am now pretty good with him. In fact, I’ve had a positive KDA in nearly every game where I selected him, and I think I’ve only lost two games. The trick that I have found is that if you rush to upgrade the damaging aspects of his shield/heal, you can dive into enemy groups and cause chaos. Provided your teammates follow up, it’s almost always death for the enemy!

I’ve been playing LoL nightly as well, and am mentally preparing for season 5, where the new Summoners Rift will be live and changes will be abound. I didn’t participate in Ranked play at all during season 4, after having earned silver rank in season 3. So for season 5 my goal is going to be to get to gold. Maybe platinum. We’ll see what I can do. Anyway, I brought Hexakill to a close with Doone during the week, have been playing ARAM here and there with friends, and have been playing some Classic by myself. As soon as the preseason goes live I intend to get into ranked, so I’m practicing in normals now. By the way, there’s now an interactive map of the new Summoners Rift, you can check that out here.

The rest of my time has been spent playing Guild Wars 2. If you recall I got the game a few months back, and I only really created a bunch of characters and checked out starter zones. I didn’t really play the game much. Since then, there was some reworking done by ArenaNet, in that they changed up the new player experience. Honestly I don’t really know how much different it is now, but it felt very smooth and fluid. Starting off, you have the little tutorial bit, then you’re basically told to visit a scout, then go earn the hearts. This feels the same. But they open up new POI’s and new things to do as you level, so the map isn’t cluttered with places to go check out. It also feels very much like you’re able to do whatever you want to do when you want to do it. If you end up outleveling a particular part of the zone, when you go back you are scaled down automatically so that you still gain xp for what you’re doing. It feels more open ended than the traditional themepark, though it’s still very much that.

I had all 5 character slots already taken up from my previous time with the game. A Norn Warrior, Sylvari Mesmer, Asura Necromancer, Charr Thief, and Human Engineer. I remember thinking I didn’t really care for the Engineer class previously, so I deleted him in favor of a Ranger. I have always enjoyed pet classes, and this Ranger was no exception. I’ve also enjoyed the idea of the Ranger class in every MMO I’ve played, but never actually leveled one. I usually go with Tank or Rogue classes, though in Rift I did make the conscious effort to level a healer. So I thought I’d just roll with this guy since I just made him. That turned into playing him pretty exclusively the last few nights. I still know that I enjoy those other types of classes, and will make an effort to play them, but so long as I’m enjoying a character I might as well push forward.

I still love how the game looks. It’s really the best looking MMO on the market (of those that I’ve played) in my opinion. I think I might place ESO a bit higher on the pretty scale, but that’s just from things I’ve heard, as I’ve not actually played it. Still, I love GW2’s art direction. It’s funny though, that the Human race is always boring, but here I am enjoying the hell out of this one. Also, Human environments are always super pretty, I guess that’s to make up for the fact that they aren’t very exotic? Just something I’ve been pondering. So eventually after leveling and clearing out a bunch of the hearts, I was told that I had story to follow, and that lead me on a series of adventures inside the main town of Divinity’s Reach. The Story gives you a more personalized feel for the world and where you fit into it, whereas the hearts and things are pretty basic fetch/kill quests like any other MMO.

The story saw me fighting thugs, then figuring out the mystery of how they continued to be harassing the town and countryside after we locked them up. I had to infiltrate their hideout while being disguised, and then later be disguised as the thugs we apprehended so that the person doing the freeing could be discovered. We ended up finding out who the culprit was, and defeated her and her guard unit. Conspiracies everywhere. After this bit of the story ended, I decided to get 100% map completion for Divinity’s Reach, and then moved on to do the same with Queensdale. Which of course, meant a lot of running around, but I’m thankful for the waypoints. I completed hearts, found POI’s, viewed Vistas, earned skill points and more. This happened over the course of a couple of nights of course.

Once Queensdale was at 100% It was time to move onto another zone, and I chose to go to the south, into Kessex Hills. I left off at that point, but will surely pick it up again tonight after Football. That’s all I have for this week, until next time, and as always, Happy Gaming!

#stateofthegame #guildwars2 #mmo #moba