Guild Wars: Year-End Review

Don't know if I posted one of these last year. If I did, it's buried in the pile of hundreds of posts where I can't easily get to it. But, I did a bit of winter cleaning of my characters after the close of the annual Wintersday festivals and, while I was at it, I made a point of jotting down where, exactly they were, progress-wise.

I have seven, at the moment. Well, I actually have eight but my lowbie Rit hasn't done much and isn't even a proper mule. From the expansions, there's Milanus, my Assassin. Oreon, my Dervish. From the original game there's Sausaletus, my original and eponymous Warrior. Reggie, my Ranger. Millie, my Elementalist. And there's also Sausaletta, my Monk, who's made the jump from neglected mule to full-time character by dint of being the first to tromp through the Far North and its many dungeons.

They're all pretty well through the various campaigns with the exception of GW:EN and a stray mission here and there, mostly in Factions and Prophesies. And, again, everyone has almost all their skills with the rare exception here and there. They also have all the Heroes except for two or three in Gw:EN that you need to jump through some hoops for - especially the ones that are in the Norn fighting tournament, I've gotten them once or twice but haven't gotten around to spinning that roulette wheel enough to get them for everyone. What's more important to me, at the moment, is how they're doing equipment-wise. Do they have a good set of armor? Are they fitted out with the latest runes? And how about the weapon swaps? Do they have all the weapons to flip between that I'd want?

/	Milan (A)	Millie (E)	Oreon (D)	Reggie (R)	Sausa (Mo)	Saus (W)	Total
XP	1.20M	2.05M	751k	1.56M	1.68M	1.96M	9.65M
Skill Points	179	241	117	210	257	249	1253
Sunspear	7.8k (8)	6.2k (7)	7.6k (7)	4.4k (7)	6.5k (7)	7.6k (8)	40.1k
Lightbringer	4.4k (4)	1.0k (3)	1.6k (3)	700 (2)	3.4k (3)	4.2k (4)	15.3k
Asura	13.7k (3)	14.4k (3)	/	13.0k (3)	42.5k (6)	13.6k (3)	97.2k
Norn	5.8k (2)	4.7k (2)	/	5.5k (2)	21.4k (4)	5.8k (2)	43.2k
Vanguard	5.8k (2)	58 (0)	/	4.4k (2)	15.5k (3)	5.8k (2)	31.5k
Dwarven	1.1k (1)	5.5k (2)	/	1k (1)	42.4k (6)	1.3k (1)	51.3k
Armor	X	/	X	X	X	X	N/A
Runes	/	X	X	X	X	X	N/A
Weapons	X	/	X	X	/	/	N/A

This time last year I had, in total, around 6 million experience and something like 800 skill points, so that's over 3 million XP and 400 new skill points I've gathered over the past twelve months. Not bad considering I stopped playing in, what, April? And only picked it up again around...maybe September? That's at least half the year I haven't been playing and I haven't exactly been playing a lot when I have, recently.

And, as you can see, my Monk has gone from being a sub-20 mule stuck on newbie island to being one of my more played characters. She's the one who's explored the Shiverpeaks the most, the only one to clear any dungeons, and she's got a lot of progress on several title tracks besides the rep ones I've included here.
You can also easily tell my most neglected character, too. That would be Oreon, my Dervish, whom I haven't even bothered to get to the GW:EN content yet. At the moment, he's my big mule, my depository for dozens of weapon upgrades and holiday items that I don't have an immediate use for and can't manage to cram into my storage vault. And he's in danger of becoming my first deletion, too.

Millie the model Elementalist has overtaken Big Saus as my most played character. Barely squeaking ahead both in terms of skill points, XP, and time played. And, yes, that's not a typo, she really has a mere 58 Dwarven love-love points. All gained, no doubt, while running through the Battledepths to zone somewhere else. That should change in a hurry once she turns in a few of the quests she's completed, though. Turning in the primary quests alone should push her well past the first rank and be a big help when fighting against those Destroyers to complete the campaign.

Since we're doing this for the record, here are some account-wide stats, too.

• Balthazar Faction: 900k
• Kurzick Faction: 77k
• Kurzick Allegiance: 34k (0)
  
• Luxon Faction: 83k
• Luxon Allegiance: 14k (0)
  
• Fame: 285 (3)
• Gladiator: 42
• Gamer: The MAD SKILLZ, baby!

Almost, almost got to a cool million Balth points. Would have, too, if I'd really pressed on in the Snowball Fights. They've all been going to keys lately. I suspect the total is a little low compared to others since, initially, I unlocked a lot of things through PvE. And I've sat at the cap for long stretches of time even as I continued to PvP.

Most of my Factions faction was earned before the allegiance tracks went in. A fact which annoys me greatly, you can be sure, since I probably just pissed it away on now-useless Jade and Amber that I never managed to trade away. If those were retroactively included in the title counts, I'd probably have figured out a way to push at least one of them over the limit by now. As it is, just that first rank is so far away, I can hardly be bothered. No idea why I wound up with more Luxon points, though.

Similar situation with the Fame and Glad points. If all the fame points I amassed during the BWEs were included, I'd have several thousand. As it is, I have a barely respectable rank 3 that I mostly earned in one run shortly after release. I tend to gravitate towards GvG when I come back to the competitive scene and I've never much bothered to get into the HA game. As for Glad points, I had so many long, long runs in the TA at or around release that I surely would have had a rank or two. But once the title went in, it's been a mess of leavers and broken 9-win streaks. I hear the format's better now but I haven't been interested in going back to get a better title.