Sunday, January 20, 2013

Thoughts on Thoughts


Asuran NPCs don’t heal other Asuran NPCs when they are down.  I’ve seen charr and humans do it, but asurans don’t.  One less krewe member to compete with or pay?  Kinda ruthless asuran are.  Do Norn or Sylvari NPCs heal other NPCs?  I haven’t been in the Shiverpeaks or The Grove too much so I don’t know.

A wet pancake sounds better than my LCD screen speakers, so I finally decided to plug in my nice head phones.  Oh auditory nirvana!  Did you know the mesmer wand cast has a sound and the energy bolt as it travels?  The music plus the sound effects…what I’ve been missing!  If you don’t have good speakers, plug in headphones when you play, it will be an amazing experience.  But turn off the back ground chatter in Divinity’s Reach…to much moaning.  What’s with that? 

Have you noticed the engineer and warrior shoot rifles differently?  Engineers shoot from the hip, a very “commando” style.  Add a monocle to the character and it’s pretty sweet.  The warrior shoots by aiming the rifle.  They will bring it up to eye level, aim and shoot.  Warriors are trained in arms, precision is important to them. Engineers are trying to just control their overpowered micro-cannon. Pretty awesome ANet gives that feel through the animations.  

Speaking of animations, the charr need a different dance ANet. Please!  Mauri dances are amazing but only when added to the loud voice accompaniment.  Without the shouting it just looks...stompy.

The only other MMO I've ever played was WoW and I came in during Wrath of the Lich King and left after Cataclysm.  To be honest, I'm glad I left it all, it had become a tedium, but I do miss one thing most - the machinima.  "Who's the Tank", "Balad of the Noob", Oxhorn's "Inventing Swear Words", any of Cranius' or Greyfoo's videos, "Blind" and WoW Credor vids were all amazingly entertaining and added a unique dimension to the game outside of the game.  GW2 needs machinima.  It needs the emotes that help make it and/or the tools to create it.  The creative opportunities are just plain limitless.

If you are feeling rather pluckish toward annoying kids, go to Taigan Groves, east of Hoelbrak.  Grab a snowball and start chuckin', it's theraputic.


There is a prison at the bottom of Rata Sum.  I do not want to spoil it but the prisoners are hilariously funny, from talking bears to invisible chickens to catching stupid.  Just go there, you'll be glad you did.

I have very little understanding of guild Wars lore.  It's taken some reading on the wikis to get a feel for it.  The I ran across Wooden Potatoes' You Tube videos.   These videos explain how Tyria's history created the situations that currently exist in the game.  They are easy to watch, quite coherent,  have many "Aha!" moments and gave me an excellent link to Tyria's past.  There are currently 5 videos with more on the way.  

One more lore plug - Project Tyria.

Grawl are the walking comic relief of Tyria.  Best grawl dynamic event is by Balthazar's old statue (Deadgod's Lair POI).  Some grawl are going to complete a ritual to honor Badazar.  Jumping grawl on the attack yelling "Badazar!"  I was in stitches.

Speaking of Grawl, where is the meme "Its so easy, even a Grawl can do it."

See you in Tyria!

Saturday, January 05, 2013

Reason #6 Why I Love Engineers

Big Ol' Bomb
The drakes expression is just priceless.

Do you really need any other reason?

See you in Tyria!