Gamma Testing: Guild Wars Nightfall – Snowball Fights

Man, I almost forgot it was Wintersday season. I missed it the last time around since I wasn't playing the game then but I'm around now. Very tempting to fire up my main account and get in on the action. My favorite activity, of course, is the Snowball Fighting arena.

For those who aren't familiar with the game, it's a PvP arena. There's a special enchantment on everyone that sets their health and armor and everything else to the same level – so anybody regardless of level or equipment can play. Unlike normal PvP you don't attack each other with weapons, instead all the skills on your bar are replaced by special “Snowball” skills – and those are the only way of fighting. There's a basic snowball and a heavier one that you need to charge up that will do more damage. But there's also defensive skills like “Snow Fort” which protects you from damage and “Mmm, Snowcone” which restores a lot of health – more than enough to survive in a duel – at the cost of temporarily blocking out all your skills. And some other interesting things to play with that give the game some interesting twists. Each profession gets their own special snowball skill. The one for the Paragon (The character I'm currently playing) is, by and large, pretty useless. It's a shout the snowballs of all allies fly faster and straighter (normally they have a pretty good arc on them so they can be dodged if you're quick) but it takes awhile to cast and it's hard to get everyone on your team in range or coordinate them enough so that they don't waste the shout. The goal isn't to kill the other team, though, it's to run presents which spawn in semi-random locations back to your base. First team to five wins so it's pretty hectic and can be really tense.

The bad part about the game is that it's random grouping. Which means you can find yourself in a really good team or a team full of people apparently chewing on their keyboards just as easily. Still, there's some fat faction at stake – 100 for killing an opponent – plus some other goodies. So it's well worth it because the games are quick and easy to jump into. Anyone with an account can roll up any kind of character and head right in.

I made the mistake of trying it out yesterday and I lost a few hours to it. Very addicting but, then, I'm an old school Arena rat. Unfortunately, like a lot of things in Guild Wars it's not very clear exactly what you're supposed to do. There's no starting cutscene or NPC that explains the rules. You're just told to run presents. Well, that's great. Run them where? And where are the presents, anyway? And, whoa, how come my skill bar just got replaced? And what are all these new skills and how do I use them? No explanation, you're expected to just pick these things up as you go along. I mean, I've played enough that I know how to quickly evaluate skills and new maps but I'm not exactly the average player just off the street who might, say, try PvP for the first time during this kind of event and get turned off by sucking horribly. At first, anyway. Because, I'll admit it, that's what I did the first...oh, several matches really. Nubbed it up completely. Had no idea what was going on or even how to use my snowball skills – and I struggled even with their layout. And having to decompress half the files in the known universe before every round thanks to having to delete my .dat file wasn't helping. It's kinda hard to get my bearings when I rez in about thirty seconds after the match starts (And, no, I have a decent enough computer and I've left the client running to stream all the data I'm missing. It still has to unpack it, apparently. And I don't care what kind of computer you have when you hit a loading screen and see “Decompressing....7,811 Files left” it's time to grab a sandwich and check back in five. It's not that ridiculous but every new armor skin or whatever I run into has to be retrieved, it seems.). So I wasn't much help to my team in those early matches. But I stuck with it and in an hour or so, I was getting the hang of it. And, I'll note, my teams were winning more than they were losing.

I mean, I'm not a snowball master or anything yet. But I'm not embarrassing myself anymore. And I love the feeling that people must get when they're pwned by a lv4 Paratrooper. “Haha, suck ice newb...man, WTFBBQHAXXXX!!!” And there've been a few moments like single-handedly holding off two players on the other team while desperately trying to prevent a third from making off with the present. Or a particularly fierce running battle of snow forts and cones as I dueled someone up and down the field. Some nice relic running on my part, too, I'd like to think. Half asleep and completely out of practice and it was a blast. Really makes me remember why I liked this game in the first place.

My point is that, just like with as with the game, I'm horribly rusty but all I need to get better is some practice and some patience. I'll find my true suck rating soon enough. But leveling from newb to scrub's going to take a long time – if I want to be banging on the ladder again (Or, actually, I hear they're getting rid of the ladder for all intents and purposes but you get what I mean.), that is. Ay the moment, though, I feel like putting some snow down someone's shirt. So, if you'll excuse me...