Guild Wars: Triple XP Weekend!!!!!

The login screen informs me that the magical dart tossing monkeys who select the weekend incentives for Guild Wars have been uncaged once more. This weekend, you'll earn three times the normal amount of XP when you complete a mission, in previous chapters, or a storyline quest, from GW:EN (The game apparently calls them repeatable primary quests and, I guess that makes a certain amount of sense since it's accurate and, from a particular standpoint all quests are storyline quests but oomph that noise. I like storyline quest, because they're the quests you need to complete to advance the plot, and that's what I'm sticking with.).

To put that in perspective, in Prophesies where XP is harder to come by, for completing a mission and bonus you'll get 6k XP instead of the normal 2k. I believe this total is doubled in hard mode, so you'll earn 12k instead of 4k. GW:EN's innovative storyline quests were a mere 2.5k so you'd get an extra 5k there. In the more generous Factions and Nightfall, if you can get the master's you'll get three times the normal 4.5k or 13.5k. Hard mode isn't quite double and you'll only wind up with 18k. In other words, you're not even going to clear a skill point and there are probably better ways to spend your time if cranking out the XP is really your goal. If you're going to be running some missions anyway, then it's going to be a nice little plus but I wouldn't run out and make a point of finishing off as many missions as possible.

And I say this as someone who made a point of running around Elona capping all the new elites back when there was a similar triple XP bonus in place. But there, I was going to get all those elites eventually and the combined lure of new elites to unlock and a massive XP payment for doing so was too tempting for me, at the time. This time around, the returns aren't nearly as impressive.

I mean, the only place this really matters is Augury Rock which, in certain circumstances, rewards you with 50k XP for completing the mission. It's designed to make sure you crack lv20 by the time it's done. And with the bonus that means you'd get 150k XP or seven and a half skill points in one fell swoop. Again, I'm not exactly thrilled because I'm at the point where the limiting factor on my skill shopping is cash, not points but it's a concern for some people. But if I had a character awaiting Ascention, that's a pretty tempting reason to go out and make sure it gets done. But, I don't....hold on a second.

I do, actually. Although it's a character originating from Factions. I'm not quite sure if that works but, you know, it's worth finding out. Have to crawl through the desert missions first, but it's doable. Maybe those monkeys aren't so bad, after all...