Saying Goodbye to Pixelated Friends

For those who are not online gamers this post will probably seem odd and frivolous and perhaps even stupid. You can all leave now, you are excused.

An activity that I have been involved in, slowly, over the course of the last 4 plus months that I have been preparing for my death is to bequeath various small items I own to people I love.  Things of remembrance. I am a sentimental old woman, and  I have a strong memory.   I believe even my sister Denise, who knows me better than anyone, and knew I hoarded a lot of little things from various members of our family down to 3 generations back, is even surprised by the number of things I am pulling out of boxes and the  number of stories I can tell just by going through a box of little things.

There are problems though in the technological age.  Many things that I own are not tangible. They exist in pixelated form and only have value in imaginary worlds.  But they do have value. And because I am an RPG gamer from way back, (I began playing 3rd ED DnD in 1978 ) My characters in the games I play are my most valued possessions. I made them all with great care and each has a back story and reason for everything they wear and own, and over the course of time and playing them, you adventure forth and they each have their own memories of various quests and accomplishments they have achieved.  So leaving your game account to someone is kind of a big deal. The game I play (because I finally made it a rule that I will only have one MMORPG that will be my time sink online) is Guild Wars (Now Guild Wars 2) I have played this game 13 years. Being a hoarder in real life, I am also a hoarder in game. I save everything, and I am especially fond of collecting crafting materials. I finally gave in last week and went in game and gave my guild a few stacks (250 pieces is one stack) of some of my most valuable crafting materials.  I should point out that because I am 59 years old and a woman I am kind of a rare thing in online gaming anyway, but also, I am not a min-maxxer and my game play usually consists of me solo going around killing things and collecting mats and occasional teaming with someone to do a few adventures.  I am not a power gamer, and I have more fun exploring and goofing off than most other things.

For the first month of my illness I did not log on much. In fact before I was diagnosed, it was my deteriorating skills in negotiating my keyboard and my powers and chat in game which clued me in that something very bad was happening to my brain. I had begun to lose the power of language at this time, the ability to type, knowing the alphabet, etc. I would look down at the keyboard, recognize nothing, and just turn off the computer in frustration.  However, once the steroids and the radiation kicked in and got the swelling down, I was once again able to read and write and recognize words and so I set about writing and also communicating with my friends in the only game I play: Guild Wars. And playing my characters and giving them a long last look of goodbye.

This is my ranger, her name is Sage Laurel. I have had her as a character since Guild Wars 1, and my explanation for her having the same name as my main in the original is that she is named for her great great grandmother.

This is my main character I play, Nalora. She is a guardian. I enjoy playing her because she is easy to play solo.

 

This is Zalez Wyvernspur. She is my warrior. I always give one character my Aunt’s name because I love her name so much.

 

This is Late Night Snacks, my necromancer.

This is Pinkipii, my engineer.

This is Meepers, my elementalist.

This is Datura Moonflower, my mesmer.

Old friends in make believe lands. There is also the dilemma of leaving my account to someone. They would have to respect my characters and not change or delete them. I know that sounds silly…they are just pixels. Little colored squares. But to gamers who have played the character a long time…years and years they are kind of real to you after a while.

This happened with my There.com avatar too. I gave it to one guy and then heard he was going to change her and I completely freaked out. I had actually originally thought the only person right to own my There.com avatar would be my friend Nina, but I was not sure she even got into the game any more. When I heard she was there, I took my avatar back and gave it to her, because I knew she would just keep her as she was, forever.

This is actually something I have done on the internet for a long time. Kept everything there, never erasing anything. Blogs, journals, social media. I do not delete. I leave it as internet history, for future internet archaeologists. And I only spent one year with an “online name” From the second year on I took my own name: Nalora.  Because like my Aunt Zalez. I kind of like it.

 

Advertisements

The Tittering Tyranny of Tyria

For the past week or two my displeasure and disappointment with what previously was my all time favorite game had grown to the point that I can barely bring myself to play anymore, except out of extreme boredom, and then I usually just go in and farm some crafting materials for the Guild Bank and then leave. In all honesty, it has me questioning whether I am just too old to play online games of the MMORPG type anymore. It seems they have evolved into something that is not geared towards folks like me.

When Guild Wars 2 began, and indeed, all during Beta, I was excited that perhaps….perhaps….the developers “got it” —that grinding and farming is not fun. And games should be fun. The drop rates for shiny stuff was perfect, the game play was challenging, but not geared towards min-maxing power gamers, and there were puzzles and things to accomplish that were not based solely on the pounding away of the wasd and F Keys.

Sadly, after just 2 months after launch, this is what it has become. After nerfs of the drop rates of even the most basic items, insertion of “diminishing returns” on everything to thwart the “gold farmers” (who will never be thwarted,—-they never have…they never will—, and if Guild Wars thinks they will be the first to do it, and by god, their user base be damned in the process, then I believe they need their heads examined.) But this is exactly the direction it has taken. Much of what they do to punish the gold farmers, instead punishes their user base.  In guild wars 2, at this stage of the game, only power-gamers, exploiters, or cheaters win. Truly sad.

The launch was a complete disaster, with hacking and bannings and a kind of mindset took over at Arenanet that is almost Tyrannical in nature. The “customer support” was almost non-existent, and when you finally did get someone to assist, you were met with snide derision and sometimes out and out abuse. Now, two months in, you are just ignored.

I rarely if ever post in the forums, but after the current Holiday Event was so horrendously askew and bugged, I did finally post, and my post was immediately censored. Why? Because I used the word “Nazi” in my post. Not calling anyone a Nazi, but merely pointing out that the “Burning book backpack” that is a reward in the current event is reminiscent of Nazi Germany. How ironic that I would be censored for pointing out that an item reminds me of a time of extreme censorship.

Here is a copy of the entire post made by me:

——————————————————

This is an automated message. Your post in Crunchy Coco Puffs Death To You! was infracted.

Your original post in Crunchy Coco Puffs Death To You!:

Cut Scene was terrific.

Having 100 mobs kill me while I was attempting to genuflect to a pumpkin-headed King cost me a couple silvers for repairs, followed by a complete freeze of computer, not so much.

So Halloween has been …uh….interesting.

So far, no drops of goodies other than candy corn that makes me puke. Oh, and a semi-complete title, that will stare at me in its incompleteness for years to come….

Being a “care bear” have spend around 5 gold to take OTHER people around Tyria to help them get a backpack shaped like a book, and another that is a burning book. (Wait, is this Fahrenheit 451? Nazi Germany?)

I think I am skipping next Halloween completely. I hate to even contemplate the FUN of Wintersday. I may start my hibernation cycle now.

Moderator Notes:

Please refrain from making sensationalistic threads

• The message was deleted.

If you believe you have received this infraction in error or wish to make an appeal, please send an e-mail to forums@arena.net.

—————————————————————————–

I wrote to the forums@arena.net twice to appeal the infraction, and got the usual response: They are not replying, but ignoring me, they do not have time for customer service, they are too busy counting their money in their ivory tower to be bothered with us peons down here.

My post above is not the least bit “sensationalistic”, and is mild in comparison with many on the subject of the Halloween Event and all its foibles.  A quick search of the forums with the word Nazi will garner you hundreds of other posts that use this word, and NOT in its historical context, as mine was,  but as a derogatory pejorative. Yet mine was deleted, and I was “infracted”.

Tyria, apparently is a dictatorship. Who knew?

Keynesian All Jacked Up

The last few days I have been taking a good look at the Economy of Guild Wars and am convinced the economist in charge must be a Keynesian.  I am more of a Hayek person, myself.  Although I can see that some intervention by the powers that be is desperately needed, and soon— or the current horrible state of the economy with the cheaters, exploiters and gold sellers being the “haves” and the honorable true gamers being the “have nots” will become the norm and the gamers will jump ship and leave the place to the cheaters.

The cost of things within the developers control should be brought down quite a bit, and by this I mean the cost of: Asuran gate travel, armor repairs, salvage kits, gathering tools, just to name a just a  few. These will nickle and dime you to death, and leave you with no other choice but to join the farmers in the tedious job of doing the same activity over and over again, or finding an exploit in the market that may eventually get your account banned. When the majority of users are looking for ways to cheat the system, you know the economy is in the tank.

Games are supposed to be fun, and it is unfortunate for one so anticipated to already be filled with tedium and grind less than 6 months out of the box. This is not saying that the game aspects are not fun, but when the rewards are so dismally small compared to the time invested, then for many, including myself, the question arises…how much more of my gaming time do I wish to put into this?

Two Tickets to Paradise And Two Weeks to Go!

Last week we had 3 days of “Stress Testing” and of course most of us who pre-purchased are looking forward to perhaps some additional play time via more stress testing in the …less than 2 weeks left before launch. Most of my guild mates have made their initial profession choices, and we all seem to be complimenting each other at this point. I will be playing my human ranger first, although I do plan on making a few of my toons on the first day (in the first hours) in order to make an attempt at grabbing some of my names that are currently not “reserved” because they are one word names, and not ones I used in the original Guild Wars.

 

Hoping that Alex, Charlie, Adam and Jared join us after launch. But if not, we will be into recruit mode anyway.

 

One thing that troubled me during the Stress tests that has not been sufficiently answered is the continued “musical server” changes that continues to plague our little group. During last week’s stress test, our home world server was randomly changed to one not of our choosing, and we were just lucky, I guess, that our entire guild made it onto the same server. No one gave us any explanation for the switch, and we were left to guess that it had something to do with over population (again). I hope they will work out these issues in the next two weeks, because it leaves me with a nagging sense of unease and confusion.

 

Our plan is still to choose Blazeridge  (our first Beta Weekend Homeworld) if it exists at launch, but if not we will try to get Blackgate again. The server ambiguity and “semi-permanent” state, still has me a bit peeved, since it really throws a curve  into any planning, and the fact that Guild Wars 2 is going to “charge” to change servers, and yet there is no stability in server choice seems a bit “bait and switchish” to me. I am going to be charged if THEY have not sufficiently planned for server population. Really?

 

Other than the server issues, however, I find the game to be exciting and fun, fast paced and most of all….beautiful. There is sooo much more to it than bang bang shoot shoot. So much to see and do and explore and learn. It will take me years to feel even a modicum of  expertise in the whole spectrum of game play. I am ready to jump in with both feet, however, and can hardly wait.

 

 

Musical Servers Oh Joy!

 

Well I read this post in the Guild Wars 2 log and apparently our Home World we chose so carefully (because the developers admonished us to do so, since it was “permanent”) has been axed. Yes, folks, Blazeridge Mountains Homeworld is no more, so we are stuck choosing another server. I am going to go ahead and make an executive decision as Guild Leader and choose Blackgate Homeworld as our server this BWE, and we can decide before launch if that is where we wish to remain—since we have no clue whether the server names are final or if they are going to be in a continual state of flux. Someone please give the engineer in charge some ritalin, thanks, drive through.

I am a tad disappointed that the elimination of our first home-world screws up our choice of Guild Name for Guild Wars 2, but since Blazeridge Mountains does actually exist in the Guild Wars  2 World, and I do like our choice of Guild Name, I am not all that keen in changing anything. It does tick me off, however. Guess it is up for discussion.

I will go in today and change our Message of the Day in the old Guild Wars 1 Guild, so people who log into Guild Wars 1 will know we switched to Blackgate. I will have to catch up with people in OTHER GAMES who were told where to find me somehow…what a big hot mess.  Of course this does a LOT to build confidence in the people I talked into trying Guild Wars again this time around for me to tell them that Servers were eliminated and gosh I have no clue what they will do at launch since they apparently don’t have a clue what they are doing either….

See you in game…that is if I don’t put my CE edition up for sale on Ebay and decide I like the public library better than gaming as a pastime.

 

Guild Wars 2 RELEASE DATE

Guild Wars 2 announced this morning they would launch August 28, 2012. Are you ready?!?

Blog post is here.

And official Video

BWE2 for Guild Wars 2

I have not written about the second BWE (Beta Weekend) in Guild Wars 2 yet, but thought I would give it a try today. This time around, Adevar  finally came in with me and it was even more fun for me because I had him to play with. We truly had a grand time.

There was a small glitch at the beginning that I hope the Guild Wars 2 team does a major rethink of, and that is how the populations of various Home World Servers are handled. For me, and for many, this is a real worry for the future of Guilds that would like to increase in population later, as the game progresses. Our server was deemed “full” and We switched servers for a while, but since our World Server decision was the impetus to our renaming the guild for Guild Wars 2, Having to again re-choose a server because we happened to fall into the most populated server would truly suck at this early a venture and the current server restrictions are not conducive to Guild growth.

Game play itself went very smooth for me, with very few glitches. I did have a couple crashes out to desktop, which I did not experience in the first BWE. But for the most part I played for hours unimpeded.  I did not take nearly as many screen shots this time around I was too busy just having fun.

Knight of Christ has set up our website and for those of you in the Guild or who wish to be, you can find it here. We are already having some discussions about rank names in the guild and various other things.  We will be using Skype for our voice chat in Guild Wars 2 as always so be sure and add me to your Skype. Nalora Burns.

We found this funny video that we all love, Enjoy!

Guild Wars 2 Beta Weekend

Lion’s Arch

It may take more than one post to truly cover everything I want to cover about my time in the first Beta test (for the players) of Guild Wars 2. There is much I have not done, much I have not explored and the world is new, vast and astoundingly rich in beauty and details.  It took me til the second day to find Lion’s Arch, which had only been released on this Beta, and not on the previous “media only” Betas (which to me was a wash, and only angered a lot of the true fans of Guild Wars, because why let the media experience what we Guild Wars addicts have been waiting years for?, and besides, who best to critique and play the game the way the developers wish it to be played then by us? —But that is a rant best left for another day, or left entirely.)

Nalora in Game

I began the game as a human ranger, since I have played a human ranger in the original Guild Wars for years. I thought comparing old and new to see the changes would be a good place to start, as well as not having so much that was new to confuse me  into tears on the first day. I loved the new customization tools, especially the minute detail customization of facial features, it was very similar to There.com facial customization, via sliders and insures that no one looks exactly like you. I love that we are not forced to take last names anymore, This allows for a couple of my toon names I love to use to finally be created on Guild Wars.

The “personal story” part of the game is an improvement, but I was a bit sad that they did not include a place to include our own personal background story to characters. I like this part of City of Heroes, and would have liked to have seen it implemented in full in Guild Wars. I completed the entire “personal story” segment (which ended at level 20, the rest to be implemented on release, they said) and enjoyed it a lot. It is similar to the main quest line in the original Guild Wars, but with a more personal angle. I am not altogether sure how the choices I made affect me overall in the world yet, nor do I know how in game increases in various attributes gained by merely speaking to NPC will affect my character either.

I loved the clothing. I think I will love it more when I see more of it, but they paid close attention to fine details. You can take tailoring and other various armor crafts as your crafting skills. I will be concentrating more on the crafting area of the game in the next Beta. They have indicated there will be one a month til release, and in all honesty I would like there to be less Beta so the full release comes sooner.

Female Sylvari

Sylvari and Asuran were not open for play during the Beta, nor was the Sylvari area, but there were some walking around town. They are entirely too “Avatar” ish for my taste, and I think they will probably be one of the last  races I will try. I do want to make an Asuran thief, since I have been a halfling rouge in tabletop for greater than 25 years, and would like to recreate it in Guild Wars 2.

Female Centaur

I met this one Female Centaur in a town, and would love to play a centaur if they ever release this as a race in upcoming expansions. She was tall and gorgeous.

Most of the bugs I experienced in Beta were quite minor, and I reported them dutifully. But there was nothing game breaking for me. The game play was smooth on my computer, without any lag except when jackwagons were “testing the server” by trying to crash it. They justified their idiocy by saying this was what they were here for, I must be getting old because I did not even try to point out that server stress tests are usually scheduled by the Developers and not the players, and are scheduled during a time in Betas when there are Engineers on the server side to watch the stress and make adjustments and notes. Most kids who do this sort of  Beavis and Butthead “Oh look we are so cool, we gonna crash the server huhuhuh.” Don’t know much about how work….works, having never held any job outside the wonderful world of fast food.

I did make our Guild in the game, but the Guild Interface is one of the things that is woefully broken. I believe our Guild Designation bug that we have in Guild Wars 1 has carried over to Guild Wars 2, in that someone else has our designation [SOLO]. We had discussed changing our Guild Name and to be honest, I am going to test making one that is The Chihuahua Emporium and Coffeehouse to see if it fits within character limitations, and if it does, then that will be my Guild. I have heard so many suggestions by my guildies of what the new one should be called, and none sound that great to me. I am more into fun than manliness and godliness in my gaming.  But we shall see.

I am having severe Guild Wars 2 withdrawals. Watching a lot of films on Youtube. I came across 4o minutes of Ranger gameplay that shows the interface and the main story line in a way that is untouched and looks like what I saw when I played, bar the gender change.