Guild Wars: Feeling the Urge

I'll admit it. I've been looking forward to this announcement. Looks like the Halloween festivities are going to be back, starting this weekend. The Costume Brawl re-opens for business on the 24th, this Friday, with the promise of a brand new map to play.

Unfortunately, although they mention a new map what they don't say is whether any of the format's skills will have been reworked. Last year the Ranger was ridiculously overpowered while some others, like the Paragon, were miserably weak. I, of course, played the Ranger as much as I could. We've had a year's work of fixes and balancing, too, and, no doubt, some of those prefab builds are feeling their age. I hope someone's taken the time to at least spruce them up a bit. And what I'd really like to see is completely new templates. Last year we had the BA Ranger, this year give us a Bunny Thumper, the next year something completely new. Switch around the costumes, in other words, breathe new life into the format with each iteration.

Alas, that smacks of effort so it's probably just going to be the same old characters running around the same old maps – there were only two last year so adding a new one isn't really going to add much variety to the rotation. If you play a lot in the Brawl, you'll know them inside and out before long.

And I will be playing a lot. The Costume Brawl is about as close as it gets to my ideal PvP format. No muss, no fuss, just head in and have some fun.

So busy at the moment, though, but I'll have to find time to reinstall and steal a few moments for some Arena or AB matches before this weekend and, maybe, connect with some old friends. I haven't played in a while and I'll want to shake off some rust before it's game time again. I'm probably not going to have much time to enjoy myself but I'm at least going to try.