GW:EN SNeak Peak: Live Thread 13, Into the Wee Hours

Lucky number 13. And the last liveblogging of the Sneak Peak for Eye of the North because the Sneak Peak is almost over.

Whew, almost fell asleep there. Almost screwed up on my time zone conversions, too, my alarm was set after the final curtain. Would suck to stay up all this time and then miss out at the very end, wouldn't it?

I went by the district list and it seems like the party's at Gunnar's instead of the Eye of the North. Lots of folks dancing by the fire. Plenty of minipets and collector's item bonuses on display. Seems there's a big trade in map pieces. I actually have all four, although I never found the guy to give them to, and a few extras besides. No copies of the ones people seem to most be looking for, though. People are talking about GW2 and meeting back up on release and varoius and sundry things. It's a festive atmosphere. The other big topic of conversation is bragging about how many consumables - the Grail of Might, of course, being the big one - they've crafted.

Bored with the chat, I check out a few obs matches - nothing too notable and I'm too tired to jot more than that down. Then, make sure I get into district one.

Before the night's over, I check over my progress one last time. I started the weekend with a mere 150odd XP. Just enough to get to lv20. Only 35 skill points. And AL 30 armor. Now that the weekend's over, I'm up to 300k XP even with 44 skill points. And bought myself a brand new suit of armor - no runes yet except for a few Vitae but I did buy up a lot of the new skills. 60 of them, in fact. I found 10 of the PvE only skills during the weekend, as well. Didn't manage to get all the skills the way I wanted to, but only because I got picky about how I was going to buy them.

Racked up 11.2k Norn title track points, good enough for the third rank. Just missed the second rank of the Dwarves with 3.6k. For the Vanguard I have but a palty 600 points. I also got 35 Mastery points towards the Eye of the North mastery track, whatever that is. Not quite sure of what those are but looks like a way of doing the whole Protector/Defender track without having to count up missions.

I completed one of the main primary quests. A whole bunch of quests. Ran through three mission quests. And three dungeons, as well. Got my butt handed to me in the Norn tournaments. But handed that butt back in spades during the Dwarven boxing.

Didn't get to do much PvPing, though. Not a big deal since getting geared up for PvP would have taken a while and I'd really would have needed much better grounding before playing around with the new skill. Didn't get to watch all that much PvP, either. Just a few obs mode matches.

Talked to some folks. Caught up with some old friends. Couldn't connect with some others. To all the ones I missed, sorry. You know where I am if you want to get in touch. And just becase I'm not talking doesn't mean anything's wrong.

All in all, I have to say I'm pretty pleased with the way the weekend went. I got a lot done. Got a good sample of all the things I wanted to sample. A feel for the expansion.

As I've said before, I think my initial impulse stands. GW:EN is a great game but I just don't have the time for it. I'll probably pick it up some time or another. But not right away. Although, I'm going to sleep on it and see how I feel about it tomorrow. I doubt my opinion will change much, though.

And that's it. The weekend's over. Kinda a letdown, really. One minute everyone's dancing by the fire. The next, the game hangs and disconnects. I'm dumped unceremoniously to the login screen. Trying to go back in initially loads me to Gunar's again but then switches me to the Monestary and the Factions tutorial. That's that, then. I was kinda hoping for an event like Gwen coming to roast us all or the devs showing up. If they did, I missed them.

Well, the Sneak Peak's over. And so's my brief sojourn back into the wonderful world of Guild Wars. I'll have some thoughts and conclusion which I'll hopefully get around to posting tomorrow. But for now, I'm exhausted. It was a fun ride, but I'm glad it's over and I can move on to other things. I've uninstalled the game for good measure. And, now, I'm going to wrap this up and get some much needed sleep.

So, yeah, I'm probably not going to be playing much again. Little busy at the moment. This weekend was something like a vacation, a gift from me to me. I've promised myself if I finish my script before the month is over that I can reinstall it again and maybe run a mission or something every now and again. If not, I'll be back in time for Wintersday and the snowball fights.

I'll see you then.