Guild Wars 2, Welcome to Tyria

Given the hours I’ve put into various MMO’s recently, namely The Old Republic and lately, Guild Wars 2, it may surprise to know I never had an interest in them previously. I’d dabbled with WoW for the sake of a couple of friends but quit at level 20 thanks to extreme boredom. The Old Republic managed to keep me hooked simply for being Star Wars, but Guild Wars has kept me hooked since the day I bought it and thus, for the first time in my life I’ve been able to take part in an MMO holiday event; things I always hear are good fun and bring the community together. Currently the community is ripping itself apart trying to rip-off each other over would-be rare weapon skins, and Charr and Norn players in particular have been getting a lot of hate lately, so maybe I was misinformed about that part... But the fun is there!

Halloween is apparently a big thing in the Guild Wars lore, with a Jack Skellington on steroids known as Mad King Thorn coming to wreak havoc on Tyria every year. This would be my first year seeing and learning about him and it’s been a blast. I’ve done a couple of scavenger hunts and I’ve fought the Mad King himself, and it all culminated in a massive game of ‘Mad King Says...’ in Lion’s Arch. It was great fun.

Running around questing like normal also yielded results, with Halloween themed ‘trick or treat’ loot bags dropping from standard enemies giving away themed goodies, from Halloween crafting ingredients to tonics to turn you into a glow in the dark spider for 15 minutes, there was a range of essentially pointless, but fun things to do. Haunted doors spawned around the world, where you could trick or treat and recieve a goody bag (the treat) or spawn Halloween themed monsters (the trick).

There was a new dungeon added for the duration which is where you’d find yourself fighting the Mad King, and getting (theoretically) good loot for your efforts, as well as a permanent Halloween themed gear bag, and you also had access his realm, where you could play in themed PvP matches, do a timed jumping puzzle up a decimated clocktower, or simply kill the Halloween beasts in the labyrinth.

There was a ton of content and if this is what ArenaNet are going to keep doing , then I’m all in to give them more money for their cash store and other bits and pieces. It’s nice to see a developer consistently keeping an MMO world fresh, especially so soon after release, and in particular one with no monthly fee, and no paid-for expansions in sight.

You’re now too late to get in on the Halloween shenanigans; the event ended on November the 2nd, but you can still take part in new jumping puzzles, at least one of which features a mini-dungeon. There was a slight hiccup where there were so many of us playing we broke the game, server, forums and wiki page all at once, meaning no-one could play at all, but to give ArenaNet the credit they deserve for such a feat, the entire system was back up and running within 15 minutes with minimal flaws which were fixed over the course of the night.

With the free November update coming which promises to change Tyria forever, physically, and the oft-mentioned Wintersday taking place around Christmas and word of another free content patch in January, it looks like I’ll be playing this as frequently as I am now, which will make my friends who want me to play Borderlands 2 happy, I’m sure. The game has been out for two months, and by january, players will have got three, maybe four completely free content updates - Halloween, November, Wintersday and the January update (if it indeed happens). It’s actually shocked me how frequently the free content is coming, and I’m saddened that I missed out on the original game if this is any indicator of ArenaNet’s methods. If you’re kicking about on Far Shiverpeaks feel free to send me Icaruschips a whisper, I’m the engineer midget with a phobia of PvP.