Boy jobs, girl jobs

British radio is a lot like British food. Mine woke me up at 2pm this morning playing Pink Floyd, followed by Amy Winehouse, which is the musical equivalent to, say, coronation chicken. Chicken, mayo, curry powder, almonds and raisins, you sick, sick fucks!
What's much more interesting than BBC Radio Nottingham's questionable mix of music is the stuff they talk about in between songs. How nobody believes in god these days, how couples split up their chores and the tits of our future queen. Have you googled those, by the way? Frankly, I was severely disappointed. I mean, Kate Middleton is dead hot and everything, but what's with the flap jacks? Maybe it's her pose, the angle or crappy image quality, but I found those pictures surprisingly difficult to masturbate to. Not impossible, but difficult.

Kate Middleton, topless

I wonder what she sees in that guy. I think it's the money. Yeah. Cmon, look at his face! Though I bet Kate Middleton cares more about a guy's personality than looks, right? All girls say they do. That's why everyone dates the nice, caring fat kid in school and not the dim-witted, attractive assholes. Ahem! Moving on...

If you aren't the proud owner of royal tits or a bedroom in your parents' house, there's a fair chance nobody will clean up after you and you have to take care of your own household. And if you're a lazy bastard like me, who eats his dinner right out of a can, repurposes old plastic bottles when movie night is too entertaining to be interrupted for pissing and refuses to vacuum until the cats start throwing up random dust bunnies twice a day, you might require a helping hand. Somebody whose job it is to clean up your shit for you, who puts your feet on the table whilst vacuuming around you and who picks up random cat feces, because the litterbox is so full of crap, the cat can no longer get in. I am, of course, talking about a girlfriend.

I can't wait for my next dinner conversation with my potential mother in law after she finds this blog. To be fair, I'm not at fault here. I was raised this way: My parents have always split their chores in a very strict manner. My stepmother would do the cooking, cleaning, washing, shopping and vacuuming, while my dad took care of Azeroth. Or the Algo Star System, Mushroom Kingdom or Britannia, depending on which era/marriage/step mother we're talking about.
I don't know how he manages to pull that off. Sure, I did catch him washing a dish or two or cooking an actual dinner once or twice during the first week of a relationship, but that's about it. They do say that opposites attract one another, but from my personal experience, I can't actually agree with that.

And that's a big problem right there: Turns out I attract the kind of girl, who doesn't mind eating spaghetti right out of a can, who doesn't see the need to vacuum when one can still guess the colour of the carpet with 60% accuracy and who needs nothing but her MMO subscription, some pizza and her piss bottle for a perfect weekend. To be fair, juice and milk bottles around here support female anatomy incredibly well, so it's not as spectacular a feat as some might think.

I don't have to explain why things didn't go so well when she first moved in with me. Tons of old cans, pizza boxes and other junk food related garbage would quickly eradicate the need to vacuum, sure. But rotting pizza crust and other leftovers would soon attract various rodents, which inevitably lead to stray cats and badgers invading the place until all the rats were gone and their predators moved on or turned into smelly badger skeletons behind the cupboard. Eventually, we decided to leave all the garbage behind and make a fresh start in a new home. We decided to split the chores into boy and girl jobs.

And to all the idiots and feminists, who still believe in equality and all that shit: There is no justice or equality in any relationship. As a guy, you always get stuck with the shit jobs.
Who gets to carry *all* the damn shopping, takes out the yucky garbage bags and cleans out the litter box once a month or as soon as the feline waste stacks knee-high? I do. For health and safety, I also handle the cooking. You do not want an English person touching your food! She gets all the fun, easy jobs. Doing the dishes. Alright, I can see how some might ask how that's fun or easy, but we're talking about a two person household here. Wash two pasta bowls and a fork, that's it. We happen to live in a country where people still enjoy their beverages straight out of a can, so there's no need to clean any cups, mugs, glasses, anything. It would probably take us an entire month to fill up a dishwasher.

Vacuuming was my job, because that super expensive Electrolux monster of a vacuum cleaner is so fucking heavy, she simply couldn't operate it. Until I broke it. And then I broke it again. Now it's her job to maneuver our super-light bagless noname vaccum cleaner around the house. Excellent! There is also the matter of laundry, but since you have to wear clothes in order to get them dirty, well... let's just say every day is Tits Out Sunday at the Nicholson residence! ♥

To be fair, there is one job she gets to take care of, because otherwise we would have parked our comfy leather sofa under a bridge years ago: Money. Or spending money, to be more precise. I earn 90% of our household income (which is a lie, I earn about 60%, another 30% is paid to us in social benefits), but I don't actually get to see or touch any of that. Ever. As soon as I see a few Euros magically appearing on my bank account for being a shit games critic, they go immediately to her and I don't actually know what happens next. She knows when all the bills are due, how much all the shit around the house actually costs us and how much we have available for groceries or the occasional Steam deal.

We never actually have any money by the end of the month even though I work really hard, so I suspect she's secretly saving towards a Porsche to surprise her lover Fernando. It's still a pretty good deal, because if I were in charge of the money, I'd spend everything on games, pizza and pay-per-view cartoon shows. Within less than a week. This is a fun fact, actually: I made thousands every month when I was still an accountant and I'd still somehow manage to waste everything before I had a chance to pay my rent. Which might explain why I'm no longer an accountant today.

On an unrelated note, I'm an idiot. It came to me when one of my magazine buddies sent me a note: "The lectorate tore up your column. Don't worry, we'll print it anyway." I'm guessing somebody wasn't too happy about how I compared dungeons in Guild Wars 2 to the act of handling a bear's manhood with sand paper. Interestingly enough, there were no complaints when I said playing Bullet Run is about as much fun as drinking a bottle of Tabasco through your ass. Then I scratched my epic beard in an incredibly manly fashion and wondered, "What if they don't pay me, because I'm okay at reviewing computer games, but because I'm great at bitching about stuff?"

Maybe I'm limiting myself too much when focusing solely on gaming whilst looking for additional work. Hmm...

-Cat

TESO, old people priorities, fuck off!

Ahh yes, The Elder Scrolls. A game where your character can master stealth, magic, lockpicking and just about anything you want, simply by practicing their desired field of expertise. Classes were more of an idea where you wanted to start, but the game allowed you to excel at anything you wanted through practice, until Skyrim abandoned the class system altogether. It was no longer necessary.

One thing I've been particularly fond of ever since Morrowind is modding the crap out of my game. Upgraded textures, enhanced immersion, custom-made characters, weapons and armor - sure, more than 90% of all the user-made stuff is utter shit, but once you filter that from the true gems out there, it can vastly enhance your gaming experience, if you so desire.
To me, TES has always been about immersion. A living, breathing game world that centers around me, because I'm the fucking hero, the Dragonborn, Sean Bean's errand boy, the Nerevarine, whatever the fuck kinda theme each game decided to go for.

I like my online games, comparing dicks, who's got the biggest sword and the most massive DPS, yada, yada, yada. But TES is different, it's mine, I shape this world any way I want and you can't fucking have it! Nobody else allowed in here! And now they've announced The Elder Scrolls Online ('TESO') and I should probably feel excited about the chance to play a Khajiit thief on the 'net, but all I can feel right now is my palm's imprint right on my forehead. It's Elder Scrolls minus the fucking Elder Scrolls!

I mean, look at the features here: Instead of the freeform character progression the series has established over the years, they're going with a traditional class system (i.e. fighter, mage, thief... yawn!). And with it being an MMO, modding is completely out of the window. What else is there? Oh yeah, a slightly more action-based combat system, which still mostly works like WoW and a personal storyline on top of the daily grind. Okay, so no more "do what you want" sandbox style gameplay, no custom-made items, characters, quests AND NOTHING TO SAVE ME FROM DARKSHÀDOPWNROXXOR4U AND HIS FUCKING ROFLSPAM IN PUBLIC CHAT!

I love TES, because there are no god damn drama queens, no religious/atheist/vegan assholes and no god damn fucking bronies. There, I said it. If you're a "brony" or a "pegasis" I fucking hate you and I hope you will die the fat, ugly, unloved virgin that you most probably are! And now the guys at Zenimax decide it's my greatest wish to put up with all these fucks in the next Elder Scrolls game! Hurray!

Seriously though - what is supposed to make me want to play this game, when they've already removed all of my favourite features? The possibility to play in a generic fantasy world with generic fantasy races? I love my orcs, elves and lizard people as much as the next dork, but you gotta offer a little more than that to get me hyped up. The world of Tamriel simply isn't that interesting! It's far from boring, but there is nothing to make it stand out in comparison to, say, Azeroth, Tyria or any other generic, derivative fantasy universe out there. I'm sure the personal storyline is a nice touch, that stuff made SWTOR and GW2 more fun, but that alone won't make me want to get into a new online game. It didn't stop TOR from becoming a commercial failure, either. And don't get me started on the toned-down graphics for the sake of performance. I mean, hey, Skyrim's visuals weren't a strong selling point or anything, right? Let's make it look juuust a little more like WoW from here, people love that shit. Yeah.

So, what else is new? I see more and more friends talking about how they're still crazy about new games like Torchlight 2 or Pandaria, but they're not gonna play as much, because "they have different priorities now". Yeah. It's all about the priorities today. Family, friends, work... you guys must have had the loneliest, laziest childhood! I dunno about you folks, but when I stayed up all night to play games in my teens, I still had to study for exams, do my homework, drag my ass to school every day. And if I wanted new games on the table, I had to get a fucking job in order to afford them! And unlike nowadays, where staying in touch with my friends means liking their stupid cat pictures on Facebook, I actually still had to talk to them. And I still managed to take part in raids. Priorities, my ass. You people are old! There is nothing wrong with getting old, it happens to most of us, but don't gimme that crap about how you're all grown up and mature now and real life is so much more important now. You're just too weak and too tired to compete over useless virtual shit as much as you used to.

Also, GW2. My ranger is approaching the level cap just as steadily as my motivation is approaching an end. I got my money's worth out of the game, but the whole "everything for everyone, you don't need to work for your stuff" approach doesn't do it for me. My first character has the mightiest items possible in every single slot, most of which I just grabbed from the tradepost ('auction house'), the rest I farmed in the dreadful, crappy dungeons. With the ranger I'm probably gonna do more or less the same thing and that's it for me. What else am I supposed to do? There are no rare mounts to camp, no epic gear to work for (unless you wanna count farming towards cosmetic legendary weapons, whose crafting-recipes are yet to be revealed) and the world vs world pvp is only playable if you don't mind spending 4 hours queued up waiting to get in. Not fun.

I love the game world and the music and the fast-paced combat and everything. Maybe I can get myself to power up a warrior or something, but that's definitely it. All my friends have already moved on to Torchlight 2 and Borderlands 2, the latter of which I don't really give a fuck about, and with every dragon slain, with every epic - sorry, exotic - piece of gear obtained, there isn't much to keep me entertained. Which is perfectly alright, mind. I had tons of fun and I can't wait for new content to be released, I'll happily grab whatever expansion packs they throw at me, but for the time being, I'm done.

Oh and let's cross all available fingers and toes for Claire and I to finally make our wedding official and everything, if only so I can change my name to Nicholson. It's one thing when a publisher asks me for an honest review on an incredibly shitty game, then adds the line, "it's still pretty fun!" without letting me know and there's my name and face next to the damn thing. Now I've been asked to count up ten things that WoW does better than GW2. The article has gone online, there's my name underneath and the mob of angry, drooling, entitled gamers has already begin burning their magazines in my name. It's fun how people on the internet only accept their own personal opinion as the one and only truth, the law, the word of god and anyone with a different opinion deserves to die. Not only aren't other forum-users and authors entitled to their own opinions - having a different opinion has to and always will be considered a personal insult.

It would he hilarious if it wasn't so stupid. I like GW2 better than WoW, actually. But when somebody asks me, "So, is there anything you think WoW does better than GW2" and I say, "Mounts?" I void my right to live. The internet is a cruel place full of morons.

-Cat

The Fail of Theramore

I know, I know, but you gotta let me have this. It's too fucking hilarious! For almost a year now, players on WoW have got zero new content. Nothing. Nada. Zilch! And it cost them a whole lot of money every month. I can laugh at myself there, too, since I was stupid enough to assume I'd keep playing, went for the 1 year sub to get Diablo 3 (another tragic story) and in doing so, I too have helped fund the development of absolutely nothing. Yay!

They've announced the fall of Theramore ages ago. People were talking about all-out war, about the climax to the everlasting battle between the forces of the Alliance and the Horde. People were expecting important characters to die there, something to make the two warring factions hate each other more than ever before. Apparently, the whole thing was eventually described in one of the WoW novels. Personally, I am not familiar with that stuff, because for some weird reason, I prefer to just play my fucking games and not spend any money on books in order to understand wtf is going on.

Well, stupid me. Maybe I should have read the book, because I don't really have a clue what's goin' on here:

So a random nameless goblin drops a bomb on Theramore and from what I've seen in the video, he managed to blow up that fortress, which was of absolutely zero meaning or importance in WoW. It used to be mildly entertaining back in WoW classic, when you had to do a first aid quest in there. But the quest got removed, you never entered the place anymore, I don't even know who the fuck was inside, if anyone, and now it's gone. I was expecting the whole island to get nuked, a huge mess, sunken ships and all that, but it turns out the place is mostly okay. Phew, right? :P

Okay, maybe I was being a bit too optimistic when I expected a world event similar to the opening of AQ or world-wide surprise zombie invasions. You know, biiig stuff that used to happen around Azeroth, sometimes in order to set the stage for new expansions. I'm not saying that they were all perfect, but they were big, they affected people and they talked about this stuff. Now I can team up with two random players, fight a bunch of peons (or footmen on Horde side) and get a shitty little cutscene, which explains nothing.

The whole thing is over in ten minutes. It feels like a slightly inflated Halloween-Event. You know, the shit you queue up for once a day, kill a boss, hope for some fun loot, go back to the daily grind when you're done. The fall of Theramore, something that was meant to be a world-changing event to set the stage for renewed, all-out war, is one of those things you just do in ten minutes. Queue up, kill some bad guys, end of story. Did I mention this is the first bit of fresh content in nearly a year?
In part, this may be my fault for fully expecting a large-scale world event. You know, people of both factions fighting on there for days until the inevitable happens. Get people involved. War, large-scale pvp, see the place burn. I dunno, maybe Blizzard decided that the servers cannot really handle that sort of thing, that it's more casual-friendly and easier to approach in groups of three. But something that was cracked up to be so big and important shouldn't be over in a mere ten minutes, without explanation, without context. Especially not when the whole community is starving for content! At the end of it, that entire event feels meaningless and bland.

It's so messed up, it's borderline funny. Think about it: There hasn't been any real content update since The Hour of Twilight went live in November 2011. Nearly ten months ago. In the meanwhile, subscribers have paid 90 Pounds, 130 Euros or 150 Dollars to be allowed to log in and play, without any actual fresh content. Now they're getting a disappointing ten minute trashmob-grindfest to set the stage for an expansion pack, which costs nearly the full retail price of any current day PC game (34,95 EUR digital download) on top of the usual monthly fee. Hilarious!

Dead horse, I know. Anyone planning to grab MoP knew there wouldn't be any new content until the furry fat fucks go live and most of you have probably pre-purchased the damn thing anyway. And if you're seriously looking forward to gaining another five levels and experiencing another week's worth of new content (whee!), you're not gonna care just how awful Theramore really is. But it really makes me wonder if people are still happy to pay monthly subscription fees when stuff like this happens. Guild Wars 2 cost me money once - when I bought the client software. No subscription fees, no extra cost and all the optional stuff in the cash shop can be bought with gold. I have just used some ingame gold to upgrade my regular game version to a digital Collectors' Edition.

Do I seriously believe they're gonna release brand new zones, dungeons and quests every month? Of course not. I'll be done with all the content I care about, just the way I was done with my stuff on WoW. But on GW2 I don't have to cancel my subscription and renew it to come back several months later. I don't have to keep on paying money to repeat old content with a new character. I've already bought the game, now I can play as much or as little as I want and I don't have to feel ripped off when nothing happens for an entire fucking year. Now there's a business model I can agree with!
It really makes me wonder. GW2 sales are through the roof. And with millions of people seeing how much you can get these days without actually paying any fees whatsoever, they might look back at WoW and ask themselves if their pricing is still fair. If they're still really getting their money's worth.

People worship Blizzard and the stuff they create for a reason. I don't think we'll ever see anything as big and impressive as WoW again. That game is a phenomenon and no matter how many times people declare it dead, this behemoth still has more subscribers than any other MMO ever had. But when your community is starving for stuff to do and you fail to deliver, then they might remember just how strong and affordable the competition out there has become. Pandaria had better be good! Damn good, even, or the guys at Blizzard may have to feel that raging, pissed off and possibly slightly self-entitled gamers don't like it when they feel ripped off. Bioware already know it, Diablo 3 gave Blizzard an idea, now it's all up to the pandas. I'm excited to see how the community will receive it.

On an unrelated note, I'm heading straight into another virtual identity crisis, thanks to this guy:

Ras Deadeye and Corky the raven. Because ravens are cool.

In a world where people earn their money by slaying trolls, goblins and other nasty shit, I'd probably try and protect myself with the toughest, heaviest suit of armor I could possibly afford. This is why I don't agree with light or medium armor in my games. I don't have the patience or talent for stealth, I don't need to wear light stuff that doesn't hinder my movement. I'd want to be sure I can take a fucking hit - because if nature doesn't design you for stealth and silent movement, then you'll want to be sure you can actually survive being big and obvious. You get the idea.

Alas, when you add stylish, awesome, black leathery steampunk-pirate coats to the picture, that suit of platemail suddenly ends up looking awfully functional and not very sexy.
That guy up there is my ranger. I don't usually play ranger-types. I love the idea of having a faithful animal companion, but hiding behind a pet, shooting stuff from a safe distance and wearing only medium armor simply isn't my cup of tea. Rangers in GW2 can be played exactly that way - use a bow, shoot things, let your pet take the hits. But you don't have to.

When I fight a baddie with my ranger, it's usually a little more like this: I use a warrior-style leap to jump at the enemy, shave 50% off his health bar with a stacking bleed attack, whilst spamming traps for additional bleed and poison DoTs. Next, I switch to stereo axes to apply another quick 5-10 bleed stacks, then proceed to chop him to bits with a whirling axe flurry. In the unlikely event that he's still alive and trying to run, I finish him off by throwing my axe, which also happens to be an excellent ranged weapon. Fun shit!

GW2's combat system allows me to play my ranger like a berserking melee badass, whilst retaining my ability to dish out decent ranged damage where necessary. In a disturbingly nerdy way, this particular style of combat actually makes sense for my character: He's only got one good eye, the other one is dull and blind. That was one of the fun cosmetic options in character creation. While this is really just for looks and doesn't affect gameplay, it would be a bit weird to use longbows on a toon with no perception of depth, so hacking shit to bits seemed to be the logical solution. I can still throw a family pack of axes, but when you chuck about half a dozen of them all at the same time, scoring the occasional lucky hit is really not a matter of accuracy.

Another thing I enjoy about this class is the tag-team of pets: That fun little corvid on the screenshot is Corky, my pet raven. Unlike the flying pets in a certain other MMO, Corky knows how to fucking land, he doesn't block anyone's god damn camera and he's a fun, bird-sized pet. When Corky takes too much damage in battle and needs a break, I can push a hotkey and immediately replace him with Spunky, my pet hyena. No need to wait for the raven to rest and regenerate, no need to waste precious time throwing him a heal, I just switch him out with one button. And by the time my Hyena gets exhausted from battle, the raven will be ready to go again. There's only a small cooldown on the switch hotkey.
You may tame every single one of the available pets in the game, there is no limit, you don't need a stablemaster. Then you put your two favourite pets on the active slots and switch em in and out with the press of a button. Fucking awesome!

Of course, nothing is ever perfect. Neither are rangers or their pets. Ever tried sneaking past a particularly nasty spawn of baddies when suddenly your pet decides it's a brilliant idea to attack a champion (elite baddie) several levels above you and all of his minions? The AI does some incredibly strange things at times. And for as much as I'm enjoying my ranger - leap, trap, bleed, switch, whirl,  throw - that kinda stuff kills a baddie in just a few seconds, but also requires a million button presses. On my guardian I just use a leap, spam my stupid greatsword whirl attack and I'll eradicate any number of max level baddies all by myself without taking any damage whatsoever. It's stupidly simple, there's no talent required and a trained monkey could do it, but I can't help but feel that my ranger is somewhat gimp in comparison. Farming, gaining levels, killing stuff... everything is a tad slower and requires a lot more effort on Mr. Deadeye. On the other hand, my ranger can rack up insane amounts of ridiculously easy pvp ranged kills where my guardian would wiggle a gay little stick - because a wand is a guardian's only utility for useful ranged DPS. :-/

The coolest outfit is ruined when you're forced to wiggle a little stick.

Regarding their coolness factor, the ranger wins hands down. Still, he's gonna need some love in the balancing department. Dungeon groups exclusively look for warriors and guardians, as they faceroll their way through the enemy hordes mashing only a single button. Rangers have to work much harder to dish out similar amounts of damage, whilst generally damaging smaller amounts of enemies, taking more time to kill them and, in turn, getting hit a lot more and a lot harder. They're fine in pvp, they're okay at your regular everyday pve activities, but that just about sums it up. And then there's this tiny voice in my brain, nagging, remind me that I'm all about the heavy armor and shitloads of damage, not compromising with a class I don't usually play. Decisions, decisions... argh!

-Cat

Doing actual guild stuff on Guild Wars 2

My humble guild consists of a mere six dedicated members. Originally, my own father, who used to join me on the original Guild Wars many years ago, was supposed to be part of the whole thing, but out of a surprise change of character, "work keeps him too busy to play Guild Wars 2". I suspect the sad truth behind that statement is fat, furry and chews bamboo.

In most games, guilds of this size offer very limited benefits other than maybe the guild bank or a fancy emblem. Hardcore endgame content, raids, competitive gameplay and awesome guild upgrades are usually reserved for well-organized groups of at least 50 members. 100+ with a proper raid-force, raid-leaders for every single class, forums and a Teamspeak-Sever is where the real fun begins. That is, if you actually enjoy rules, ranks and regulations as well as being called only by your class or function rather than your actual name. Only the raid leaders talk, the rest has to shut up and listen. And yes, I'm emphasizing extremes here, but I've experienced this exact same thing and it's not rare or unusual in any way.

GW2 has been out for less than a month and our fun little guild has access to nearly 50% of all upgrades. We have our own workshop, a nice little vault, guild armor... we may not be moving as rapidly as some of the bigger groups out there, but there is a steady sense of progress and I don't feel like we're gimped or missing out on anything. And after tonight I'm confident that we can tackle just about every bit of content the game has to offer, should we feel like it. We've just finished our first dungeon as a guild.

We're still trying to figure out whether we couldn't work out a proper strategy or whether bad game design allows for no such thing

Up to this point my personal experience with the dungeons in this game has been limited at best. I've played the very first dungeon (Acalonian Catacombs, level 30) a day or two after release and found it chaotic and not very fun, but blamed it on lack of experience and a possible need to fine-tune the difficulty some more. The game also forced me to beat the level 80 dungeon in order to finish my personal storyline, which was ridiculously easy. Other than that, I'm only familiar with farming an explorable mode dungeon (Citadel of Flames) for armor tokens. This is a bit of a special case, as the player base has already worked out every trick and shortcut, allowing them to farm the whole thing in 15-20 minutes with very little effort. Think WotLK random hc. Ogog1!

As it so happened, five of our six guys and gals were online tonight, all of us fulfilled the minimum level requirement for the Ascalonian Catacombs and so we decided to group up for shits and giggles and see how it goes. Our brave little band of adventurers consisted of hardened raid-veterans as well as casual dungeoneers and even a complete MMO newcomer with no dungeon experience whatsoever. We didn't use voice, as it was our first ever spontaneous group event, but I'm hoping to record our future exploits, voice chat and everything, to share them on here. Oh hey, Mr. Brick, if you're reading this - could you put the name of that voice changing tool thingie in the comments section so I can sound like a charr when we do this? :P

Our main problem with the dungeon was aggro and sometimes lack thereof. When a boss baddie decides it's spank the necromancer day, there is very little the rest of us can do to prevent his untimely death. If, on the other hand, one of my group members is trying to revive the necro and I want to keep the boss off of him in the meanwhile, we're all fucked, as I have no taunts or any other means of getting the bad guy's attention. One might argue that everybody has heals, dodge moves and the ability to take care of themselves, but in a dungeon, where even the trash is very capable of just one-shotting you, a pathetic once-per-40-seconds selfheal is as useful as reattaching a severed head with a band aid.

It was fun, but everybody seemed glad when it was over.

The dungeon itself wasn't bad at all. Traps would kill careless group members on multiple occasions until the more perceptive among us would find a way to disable them. Placing a boulder on a tread plate wasn't the most sophisticated puzzle in the world, but it encouraged at least some mild brain activity. Lore-wise, the whole setting is pretty great, too. Mad King Adelbern and his loyal underlings, whose hatred for the charr keeps them coming back as vengeful spirits.

Sadly, most of the good stuff was overshadowed by sheer chaos. Group member down - should I run there and pick them up or try and pull the baddie away from them, so they can get up on their own? And when I'm down, should I spend two minutes trying to revive myself or should I just teleport to the nearest waypoint and hoof it? And that's the next thing: With the ability to just revive and run back to the action, where's the challenge? For as long as at least one guy is alive and near a boss, you can rez and run back as many times as you want and the battle won't reset in the meanwhile. Respawn-zerging a boss may not be the most desirable way to go, but it's entirely possible. I don't like this at all.

I'm not sure what to make of this. To me, the fun part about a boss battle is figuring out the pattern, the strategy, understanding how it all works and adapting to the situation. Win the day with brains. That said, even simple tank & spank seems more enjoyable than respawn & run back. I really hope we're all just missing something here and there's some clever way to tackle difficult boss battles as a team, avoiding constant respawning like idiots, with very little regard to health and safety.

All my bitching aside, I had lots of fun. We died a whole lot, we revived each other a lot, there seemed to be very little concept behind what we did. But eventually the bad guys were dead, we bagged some phat lewt and we've achieved something as a guild. Better yet - now I know we can do all the dungeons and all the explorable modes ('hardcore') together, if we so desire.

Sure, it wasn't perfect. Some of us are worried that this is all there is to it. Brute-force your way through it, be persistent rather than clever or skillful. And yet, the whole thing is actually more fun than the 5+ guild members stuff I've done during my final days on WoW. I've got mad love for the Goatbusters and everything, but the sad truth is this: Doing ancient level 70 raids, because the guild is too small, weak and inexperienced to handle any proper endgame stuff was fun for a little while, but not very rewarding. But that's just the way it is on there: Play with a small amount of people you can stand and never do anything important or play the real endgame with 100 assholes you loathe. On GW2 we can do everything. And that's a pretty good thing.

-Cat

Still level 80...

Just that.

-Cat

PS:

Guild Wars 2: One week and 80 levels later *SPOILERS*

Grimclaw the Slayer - it's nice when characer names can contain spaces

So I've hit the level cap on Saturday, one week after headstart launch. Could have done it about two days earlier if it wasn't for my hardware problems, but now that that's finally fixed... well, yay.

I'm sure you're expecting a certain amount of bitching on my end now, since that's what I usually do. And don't worry - we'll get to that. For the most part, though, completing the storyline has been fucking epic and proved to be an experience unlike any other recent MMO. Considering I didn't really wanna touch any other games of this kind again, that's probably saying quite a mouthful. More importantly, I'm still highly motivated to keep on playing, earn those extra sexy pieces of armor I want and help friends and family through their individual story.

Despite all my praise, it has been a bit of a bumpy ride. Once I got to the level 50 areas, many public events would glitch out one way or another. The vital NPCs for escort missions would sit around and refuse to move. A monster would glitch out during a defense event and become invulnerable, making it impossible to finish the event. During other events, the attacking monsters would simply refuse to spawn or they'd spawn an infinite amount of times, but the progress bar would refuse to move. That said, even with the many broken and glitched events I have encountered on my way to the level cap, the level curve never felt too steep, so making progress was never too frustrating or tedious and with whole event chains going on everyhwere around me, having a few broken ones was annoying, but hardly ever game-breaking.

Hardly? Well, unfortunately a glitch in my story quest prevented me from progressing through that particular part of the game for two days, until Arenanet fixed the problem. These things can happen, especially just a few days after launch, but it's never really fun when you're on the receiving end of that crap. Friends of mine, who play on different servers, have reported little to no broken events, so it seems that stuff can break down locally and simply lacks some kind of a fail-safe, i.e. an event reset if nothing happens for a given amount of time. Most of these issues will probably be history in the near future.

Fighting my way through the final dungeon

The story itself is entertaining, but not as dramatic or moving as SW:ToR, let alone singleplayer titles like Mass Effect (I know ME3 has added multiplayer, fuck off). When the game told me that one of my former warband buddies had fallen, I didn't even know who they were talking about in that cutscene. Turned out it was some guy you briefly run into during the tutorial. Eventually, you get to fight a zombie version of him, which doesn't feel particularly shocking or horrible in any way. Later on you end up losing so many soldiers and comrades and other briefly-introduced NPCs you barely even know, it's difficult to give a crap. It does set the stage - you're at war, people die, nobody gets spared. But you won't care for the people who die. You're doing this for phat loot, but not for the sake of these bleak characters.

The story also assumes that you finish each dungeon at the appropriate level, which I didn't. All actual story missions, with the exception of the very last mission, are soloable. When I skipped dungeons, the solo cutscenes would introduce new characters to me and treat them as though my character was already acquainted with them. I had one cutscene, where a character had no voiceover at all, in another cutscene my charr character had a human voice. I'm nitpicking here, this is all minor stuff, but it's there.

A bigger issue lies in the difficulty and the AI buddies. I had missions where the game would send me half a dozen soldiers to make things easier and these guys just blindly stormed into the nearest enemy and got themselves killed in seconds. Reviving them would only result in them repeating the very same idiotic thing, so I had to do the whole thing alone and entirely without help. At its worst moments, the story would send twenty enemies at me and all my AI companions would be dead. This issue has been brought up by many players and I'm sure it will be resolved in due time, but right now the AI buddies are about as useful as a shit-flavoured lollipop (assuming you dislike the idea of shit-flavoured lollipops, otherwise replace it with something you don't find very desirable). And when characers like Rytlock Brimstone, who come across all powerful and mighty in the storyline, get killed 250 times like retarded lemmings in every dungeon, something just doesn't seem right. On the plus side, many story quests can be played with friends, which is incredibly fun. Do yourself a favour - play this stuff with your friends!

Grimclaw and the guys from 'Destiny's Edge'

So why am I skipping the dungeons? Because they're no fun, especially when you put your skill and trait points into melee. They're not completely awful. In fact, they're better than the dungeons you see in many other MMOs. But they're far from great. The vast majority of enemies will just one-shot you in melee, so people usually go full ranged. And while it is true that you can beat every dungeon with just about any combination of classes, people are stuck in the old trinity mindset, so you'll end up with the usual LFM messages: "Looking for Warrior, Guardian and Mesmer for instance X!"

When you die, you pick a respawn point inside the dungeon and run back. Bosses don't reset or regenerate, so the less talented, less experienced parties tend to just respawn-run at bosses over and over again like lemmings until all the bad guys are finally dead. The battles are big and spectacular, the story is nice, the loot is fun and all, but turning the whole thing into an infinite rez and respawn and making ranged attacks the only viable option simply doesn't make things very enjoyable to me. When I found myself a group to beat the final dungeon in order to finish my story, the dungeon glitched out after the third boss and our group had to start over.

After defeating the final boss in cutscenes and a crappy airship cannon sequence, where the bad guy doesn't even fight back

What's worse, I feel cheated out of my final boss encounter. Yes, I get to kill tons of bosses on the way to face the elder dragon Zhaitan. I get to see him in epic cutscenes, I get to hang out on the airship that destroys him and I even get to finish him off with a cannon. But there is no actual battle against him. Nothing. He's the final fucking boss! The final cutscene reminds me there are still many more elder dragons (i.e. future expansions) on the horizon. So future endgame bosses might be harder to kill. But in a game that makes me fight an epic world boss at level 1, I was expecting a little more than a scripted event "boss battle" at the very end.

To be fair, you don't actually need any dungeons, raids or even the story to have fun with Guild Wars 2. There are so many events, where you start off with a harmless little escort or you kill a few monsters and suddenly you find yourself following dozens of players as they raid and wipe out monster camps, fight massive world bosses and loot ridiculously epic treasure chests. I've looted the most massive sword after fighting a dragon world boss and there hasn't been a single day where people haven't sent me messages asking where I got that awesome weapon!

Another thing I really enjoy is the community. Because they're friendly. Not because they're all better than the average WoW player or because of "server pride" or imaginary bullshit like that. But because the trolls are scared. Arenanet have a very strict policy against insults, racism and general dipshittery and punish first time offenders with a harsh 3 day ban. I'm pretty sure I'll get my ass banned at some point, but I like things that way. The atmosphere on most MMOs has become insufferable and it's about time somebody starts punishing people for being dicks.

One might argue that a community isn't really nice when they only behave out of fear of getting caught, but let's remain realistic here: The fact I don't beat you up and take all of your stuff is not related to the kindness of my heart. I just don't wanna get locked up for it. And that same 12 year old that calls me a homo on Call of Duty would do the same thing IRL if he didn't know I'd beat the shit out of him. People are assholes and they need to be stopped by fear of consequences, plain and simple.

Speaking of assholes: Goldspam and account hacks have begun plaguing Tyria. Interestingly enough, the gold spammers charge considerably more than Arenanet's legit ingame gold shop, but I'm sure there's still plenty of stupid people who fall for that kinda crap. What's worse, the security around Arenanet accounts is practically nonexistent. Claire's mother got hacked today, they changed her login name and she no longer has access to her account at all. Ironically, she got an email telling her that her GW2 account is now using a new email address after the hacker changed it. No possibility to undo it, no link to report a hack, no nothing. Just, "Guess what, your GW2 now uses another email", that's it. Why the hell it wouldn't at least ask for a confirmation that she has really requested a change in the first pace, is entirely beyond me.
Even crappy F2P games like Star Trek Online now send you authentication emails whenever there's unusual activity. Somebody trying to log on to your account from a foreign IP? Here's an email with an authentication code - you cann't log on until you type it in. GW2 does no such thing, you just log on, change the email to whatever you want, do a password reset and that's that. Authenticator? Email confirmation? Security questions? Nothing AT ALL!

Will the future bring better boss battles and hacking security?

We'll be playing without Claire's mother tonight. We might even see her account logged on, see somebody advertise goldselling websites with her character or level her toons in wvw for more loot to sell. I've created a brand new email address to re-register my account and I'm still feeling somewhat paranoid. I'm having lots of fun with this game and I've greatly enjoyed playing it with friends and family. Two of them have been hacked now, one of them considers giving up on the game for good. Sure, these things happen. Claire and I got hacked on WoW multiple times until we got authenticators. Claire got hacked on MSN and Facebook and I get login attempts from China on my Gmail account all the time. But I can't help but feel that Anet is making it too easy for these guys right now.

It gets better: When you do manage to get your account back, you may find yourself having to send another ticket, because the hacker got you banned. Stolen items may or may not be restored, but gold and collectibles remain gone.

I hope they can fix things. I hope they'll improve their security before this gets out of hand. I really like this game. A lot! But such crap doesn't do anything to help the game's reputation and it doesn't make it any more enjoyable to me or my friends.

-Cat