BMP Grand Prix: Gwen and the Great Escape

And now the one you've been waiting for. At least, I have. I don't know if it's just me but I find if I have a box of treats, say some chocolates or a gift basket or something, I like to save what I think s going to be the best, the tastiest, the most delicious, for the very last. One last burst of excellence as the experience finishes, in so many words. And that's why I've kept Gwen in reserve for now. I don't have high hopes for the gameplay, I expect all kinds of funky Mesmer crap, to put it bluntly. But I have a special place in my heart for Gwen and what she means to the Guild Wars story. A chance to play as her, a chance to experience some of the adventures, the hardships, that turned her from the sweet young girl with the magic flute of healing who'd frolic after me in Pre-Searing into the bitter, suspicious young woman I encountered in the Eye of the North is one I've been relishing.

I'll save you the trouble right now, though, it's a big let down. Probably nothing could live up to my expectations but they were rudely dashed upon the cold, hard concrete of reality like a porcelain plate dropped from the heavens.

But, if you're not put off by that and what's sure to be my unrelenting negativity then we can continue.

Okay, well, to start off with something positive, the illustrations in Gwen's book are like something out of an illustrated children's story. Nice touch that.

There's no weapon for this mission so, to start it, you need to make sure there's nothing in your hands.

The storyline here is that you'll be reliving Gwen escaping from the Charr to find the Ebon Vanguard.

As for Gwen's bar, well, thankfully, it's not some Keystone madness (No, for that, you need to go to Saul.) or a metabuild full of Echoes and Arcane Mimicries.

Unthankfully, you start off with a mere four skills.

Flee. Stance. 30recharge. For 10 seconds, you move 33% faster.

Throw Rock. Skill. 3/4cast. Throw a rock at your target. If it strikes a foe, that foe is knocked down and becomes crippled for 10 seconds.

Hide. Form. 1cast. While you are hidden, enemies cannot see or target you for up to 60 seconds.

Feign Death. Form. 1/4cast, 300recharge. Play dead, causing all enemies to cease attacking you. This skill ends when you move.

And, to top it off, you only have 300 health and 20 energy. I'm not liking this already as I smell yet another stealth mission afoot. Looking at those skills the plan seem obvious. You'll use Flee to run around as fast as your little unprotected legs can carry you while you use Hide to duck away from enemy patrols. Throw Rock will be used to plunk anyone giving serious chase, allowing you to skate away freely. And, if all else fails, you feign the aggro off and wait until your foes wander away.

I am so not liking this at all. Interestingly, Throw Rock is grayed out to start, as is Hide. Maybe you have to find the rocks to throw? And places to hide in? You have to supply the ammunition to use those skills, it seems. Interesting idea, actually, I always wanted to see more skills like that - you could do a lot of neat things with skills that require you to pick up and use up bundles.

Gwen, herself, looks great, though. In that she looks completely awful. Like she's been dragged through a war zone on her face for the past three years and then beaten with the "street urchin" stick for several more. She's dressed in a tattered, torn white dress and her face is dusty, dirty, her hair tangled and caked with mud. That, right there, is superior art direction at play. The bonus missions have all been well designed but they've taken this one step beyond. That, I'm liking.

You start off in a cell, appropriately enough. I'm back to the not liking it state, though, since it means I have to sit around and wait fr the dialog to get finished. There's some Ascalonian noble delivering important plot points and probably telling me how to beat the mission but I'm more concerned with trying to find the best lighting angle for a screenshot of little orphan Gweny. Then, a big Charr boss comes by and tells us it is a good day to die. For him, that is, because we're going to be the one's dying and he's getting a cut of the gate receipts. I hope he chokes on the ball of wadded up leaves and filth encrusted sticks that the Charr, no doubt, use as currency.

I hates the Charr. I am looking forward to killing them en masse by the end of this mission. But, as it is, Big bad boss Charr leads Gossipy McExpositionfairy (Is that...Damn. Too many letters.) off to an Arena to face a Siege Devourer. I notice he's only lv1. The results are predictable.

After they clean his entrails off the Arena floor - no doubt with their prickly cat-like tongues - it's my turn on the bloody stage.

Heading in I scope the place out, immediately noticing a bunch of rock items littered about the floor. There are two red objects in my view, one's the Devourer of Doom, the other is a Cracked Pillar. Ye gods, could this be any more blatant?

I pick up a rock, and, yep, my Throw Rock skill turns active. Hitting Flee, I run in and heave it at the pillar and....nothing happens. Well, wait, I took off a sliver of its health bar.

Unfortunately, the Siege Devourer takes off quite a bit more of mine. Fortunately, not all of it. He hits for something like 140 damage and I've got 300 health. And, not being entirely stupid, I was already running for safety while our respective projectiles were in the air. Just to be on the safe side, though, I feign off. I immediately pitch over face first in the dirt. And I stay that way until I regenerate.

Anyhow, here's how the rest of my "battle" with the dread Siege Devourer works. I'd noticed playing through the campaign that Siege Devourer shots obeyed obstruction rules. That is to say, if there's something relatively solid, like a wall or the edge of a cliff between the Devourer and it's target, the shot will hit that and not its intended target. Unlike some AoE spells, you don't get hit by the splash, either. So I duck behind a large pillar, wait until the Siege shot fires, rush out, grab a rock, chuck it at the damaged pillar, and duck right back. It takes four or five hits but, eventually, a cutscene is triggered and the devourer is flattened with a satisfying crunch and a spray of purple blood.

That opens the gate behind the Devourer as well and I run through it as dozens of Charr follow. There's a gate lock up ahead and I press it to make sure they can't follow.

Now, I find myself in some kind of catacombs along with some ghostly ex-heroes. Blah blah blah, they say stuff but as it does not directly lead to me laying waste to the huge army of Charr behind me, I'm not interested. There's also a book on a pedastal that gives me my fifth skill and it's....Illusion of Haste. Oh, just perfect.

Yeah, that's right, I have two run buffs now. Except the one has a long enough duration to cover the recharge. And also happens to cripple me whenever it runs out so I'm forced to cast it over and over just so I don't limp around the place. There's no point in using Flee now, is there?

Conning around I can see some other tomes tantalizingly out of reach. I guess I'm supposed to run around and touch them to unlock my hidden Mesmer powers. Or something. I'm not really feeling the whole "Gwen gets the strength and power she needs to defeat the Charr from a trip to the library." It's...an outside solution, a deus ex machina, and that's inherently unsatisfactory. Especially when it just comes out of the blue without any build-up. Yeah, sucky-poo.

Also on the floor is an unlit torch and nearby, a flaming brazier and another one. Oh, I know what that means. Once I go through some mist, the ghosts reappear along with some ghostly Charr down the Hall. They don't attack me but they've apparently left a bunch of traps on the floor that cause crippling. Almost makes me thankful I have Illusion of Haste. If it didn't take nearly as long to cast it as it does to struggle forward like a gimp.

Lighting the Brazier takes care of that and there's another book nearby with Distortion in it. That's....decent enough. I guess. If this was January 2006, maybe.

The door next to it is locked, though, and I have no way in. The ghosts have disappeared and I'm forced to run around to find them. Backtracking I find another book with...Shared Burden. Okay, this is getting ridiculous. I couldn't at least get Crippling Anguish? That one at least causes some degen.

But, it turns out to be useful, here. This is the one time in the history of people playing this game has there ever been a use for this clunker because the next step in finding my way through this increasingly wretched mission involves helping the ghosts flee from a pack of spectral pursuers. They're nicely clumped up so I can snare them all and, then, recasting all the while, I lead my ghosts to freedom.

Freedom defined here as "unlocking the next door." Outside of it is a rock. Inside another cracked pillar. And a bunch of dart throwing flame traps. This is apparently where the mission "lets" me make good use of Distortion as it blocks enough of the shots for me to run up and peg the pillar with my stone. Which does...something.

Honsetly, I don't even remember because I suffered a psychotic break when I opened up the next book and got SUm of All Fears.

Sum of All Fears. Because I needed another snare, I guess. Instead of...anything. Anything else that I could have used to do something instead of running scared. Honestly, it's a good thing there's no 9th skill because I have a feeling I'd be uninstalling after I found it.

Right, so, anyway, after all that the ghosts are freed or happy or reunitied with their loved ones or just saved a bunch of money switching to Geicho. I don't really care because they're characters I never met and have no emotional investment in whatsoever. Could have been a lot more effective if they're resurrected some old NPCs from Pre-Searing - so to speak. And if the whole thing is an exercise in heavy-handed design forcing me to do things rather than allowing me to succeed. Feh on it, says I.

And now I'm standing (Well, okay, I'm seething. Stupid language hasn't caught up with virtual avatars and the bifurcation of identity in an online world just yet. My character is standing...) in the middle of a valley with free roaming Charr standing between me and my destination. There's a little icon on my mini-map. One I've never seen before, actually, but whatever, I know that means I need to make a mad dash for it, I'm just trying to pick out the best route here.

I decide, as I usually do in these things, that it's best to go left? Why left? Well, most people are right-handed and given a choice between turning left and turning right, will tend towards the right. Designers are also aware of this and if there's something nasty waiting for me, it's more than like as not on the right side while the left might not have seen as much attention because it's not where most players would go. Yes, I do overthink these things. Have we met before? Because, you should know, I overthink everything.

There's a Seige Devourer along the way. He's a bit tougher than the Charr patrols that I've snared and Distorted my way away from. But there's a cliff lip right next to him that I use to obstruct his shots long enough to fly past him.

After that, it's a straight run into the snowy foothills where I encounter... a cutscene.

Fuck me. Seriously? Seriously, that's it? The end of the mission is me running like a little punk throgh a bunch of enemies so I can stumble half-dead into a bunch of Vanguard who are inexplicably camped nearby?

I couldn't, say, run into them while they were desperately fighting off a bunch of Charr and use my awesome (Yet inexplicably) found new skills in order to help them survive? I couldn't actually do something besides solve a ghost mystery that would make Scooby-Doo groan?

Gah, I have to go pound rusty nails through my dick to calm down. Because that's going to be a less excruciating pain than the headache I have now.

If I had to rank the bonus missions this one would be well far down on the list. It just does not, to me, work well. Other people might disagree. And, perhaps, my expectations were too high heading in since I'll cop to no small amount of fondness for Gwen and the Guild Wars of yesteryear. I expected... I don't know what. But something awesome, something good, something better than what I wound up getting, anyway.

Okay? Everything I said about stealth missions with Saul? Goes double for cases like this where you don't even have any offensive skills, just defensive stuff and the crap to keep you alive. But, Saus, I hear you ask? Wasn't your complaint that it felt wrong to have a bunch of awesome killing tools at your disposal only to be told you can't use them? Wasn't your concern about the loss of flexibility and being strapped to the railroads of plot contrivance when there are other options available, just not made valid? Don't, by removing any skills outside of what the developers want you to be doing, the designers also remove that sense of a false choice? Which is, granted, a good point.

But my fundamental issue with stealth elements goes deeper than that, so it bugs me even more here. And that's because I play games like this to feel empowered. To feel like I'm in control of something, that I'm powerful and can take matters into my own hands and accomplish things because that's just how wonderful and amazing I am. Running around, sulking away from detection, and being scared I'm going to get killed at any moment with little way of defending myself does the exact opposite. If I wanted to feel disempowered, I'd go talk to my boss or try and get a date or think about all those songs I haven't sung and those mountains I haven't climbed and the inevitable rush of time that means I'm closer to death now than I ever was before and there's nothing I can do to change that. I can already feel weak and small, in other words, just fine on my own, in the real world, and I play games to escape that. Not reinforce it.

This mission is all about feeling afraid and feeling hopeless (And, granted, it's also about fighting back and regaining some small measure of control in a world gone wrong. About learning to seize destiny rather than be tossed about by it which is, you know, nice and all but that's the storyline. The gameplay itself doesn't bear that out.) so it's already got a strike against it, in my, of course, all-important book (Because, it's all about me, after all. No one else's enjoyment matters. This is, in case I'm not being clear enough, being typed with heavy sarcasm. I am sneering at my keyboard even now.). It's not helped by the fact that it's really, really, really easy. Once you figure out how to beat the Siege Devourer - which you should be able to do if you've just been lobotomized what with all the clues the game throws in your face - then all you have to do is run. Just run to the exit. I got wrapped up trying to help the ghosts and collect awesome new skills but I didn't need to. The exit was right there, in front of me, I just missed it. And I could have made it to the finish line with the skills I had on my bar at the beginning. Or even just by watching the radar map. That's a good thing as far as speed runs and setting records are concerned but not so much for the difficulty level.

And the worst thing is that, after the mission was done, I wasn't left feeling satisfied or content, instead I was left wondering, "That's it?" I got through it all without feeling like I'd accomplished much of anything. I threw a rock at a pillar, ran to a switch, ran through a mausoleum, and ran across a field and....that's it. There was no grand, climactic event. No boss fight or final puzzle to solve that wrapped up the experience. No climax before the denouement to release all that pent up tension and emotion created by, and I'll give full credit here, the excellent atmosphere and bleak sense of desperation created by the skillful designers. The details, the environment were note perfect, it was just in service of mission goals that weren't much of anything.

BMP Grand Prix: Turai and the Battle of Jahai

Now for Turai. Or, as he's better known, the Ghostly Hero. This mission reaches back into the past to when he took on my old buddy Palawa Joko and his undead hordes.

Turai gets a sword and shield so, yes, it's a sword Warrior's bar. And, as expected, he gets a few unique skills to play around with as well. He's a D-Slash warrior with For Great Justice so, again, at least the devs have passed build making 101. He also gets Endure Pain and Healsig which means the devs have yet to take buildmaking 201, I guess. And he also has Distracting Blow. I used to love Distracting Blow. I still do, it's like an old friend I've outgrown. He also has Whirlwind Attack, one of the PvE only skills. As well as a Turai only skills, For Elona! and the monster skill Giant Stomp. Well, not really the monster skill since it works slightly different but it's nothing fantastically new, either. I am well acquainted with that one from long hours of farming Riverside and look forward to using it to good effect.

Giant Stomp. Skill. 5en, 3/4cast, 30recharge. Knocks down foes in earshot and deals 100 damage.

For Elona!. Shout. 4adren, 4recharge. Shout. Allies within earshot gain +25 armor and attack 33% faster for 10 seconds.

Both are solid and I have no real complaints about the bar. Like to see a run buff of some sort but as I imagine this is a zombie stomping mission that would make Romero proud, I don't think I'm gong to have to run down many foes.

For stats it looks like Turai has only 11 in his primary attribute, Strength, and 14 in both Tactics and Swordsmanship. He's also a tower of power with 700 hit points. I wouldn't disbelieve that he's also got some boosted armor as well. Only 25 en and a Warrior's regen, though, but it shouldn't matter too much.

Turai looks just like he does in the HA. Just not so...ghostly. Armor is nice and bronze looking and, yes, his sword is massive. Really, really massive and phallic.

He starts off on a hill with 9 lv20 allies. Three Elite Kournan Troopers who are Warriors. A Paragon, two Rangers, and three Elementalists (One's a water snarer which is nice, the others are lightning zappers. I'd have liked some Fire for the AoE but, hey, what can you do?). They overlook a frozen tableau of soldiers readied for battle. There are hundreds of them and that's, perhaps, why the game doesn't actuall render them as individual characters, instead keeping them as background pieces.

Oh, yeah, baby! I feel like Dicky V on Tobacco Road here. First encounter is a bunch of low level undead soldiers who rush the party. Giant Stomp works beautifully. Caught them all. Never seen so many 100s flash across the screen at once in my life nor so many helpless foes waiting for me to deliver the coup de grace, either.

As we round a bend there's a scripted scene, complete with trumpet sounds, where my characters spout off about the army on the move and then a ton of green triangles start herding across the screen. It's a nice touch. Makes it seem like those soldiers in the opening scene have come to life and are charging at the undead horde. They haven't, really, it's just that old trick of spawning them right out of sight, marching them across the screen and getting rid of them once they cross the horizon that makes a few animated characters look like thousands. I've taken film classes, game, I'm wise to your tricks.

I'm finding that I don't have much use for Distracting Blow - although I'm probably going to regret saying that - for its intended purpose. Instead, I'm using it for the Prot-Strike effect of increasing my swing rate. My Joyfulness is through the roof but it lets me get to the D-Slash/Whirlwind spam just a little sooner.

The encounters are toughening up, plenty of lv24s sprinkled in. My bette noir now are the Awakened Defilers who'll summon minions from the corpses I'm strewing across the countryside.

Huh, I just realized his profession is listed as the same as the character I went in with, who happened to be my Monk. That's pretty weird.

Okay, so I like to rambo or, as the kids of yesterday were calling it, go balls deep. Just charge into the enemy lines, pausing to smack them with hardened steel as the spirit takes me, and then beat a hasty retreat once I catch enough heat. Struggling back to my own lins where my waiting healers can pump health back into me. It's, you know, establish Warrior tactics. But, here, I lack a run buff when bugging out so I head back to safety with all the grace of a druken water buffalo. More importantly, there is no safety to head back to since there are no Monks in the party. None. No one to heal me and I'm forced to rely on HealSig and Endure and kiting around to survive. Not saying I can't do it just that I'm not used to it and I'm rusty and it's going to get me in trouble sooner rathre than later.

We come across a Corsair camp. My aide asks me how I want to procede? How do I want to procede? I want to slaughter them, drive them before me, and hear the lamentations of the their womenfolk. I want none left alive to tell the stories of the carnage of this day! This. IS. ELONA!!!

Yes, a 300 joke. Yes, I went there. Yes, this isn't exactly a proud moment. I went through the whole Togo mission without making one Kill Bill reference but I couldn't resist here.

Hee. They have a boss named Admiral Jakman.

The next encounter is a tough one. The big new foe are awakened Clay Giants. Not only do they use Roaring Winds - the anti-shout ritual that's deviously clever to throw against me although it doesn't exactly hurt since I'm mostly adrenal - as Giants, they're immune to knockdown. Giant Stomp still causes damage and it acts as a nice AoE interrupt which helps when they try to Troll up but these buggers annoy me.

Okay, so there are two times when you want to use Endure. Remember that the health it gives you is temporary, it disappears when the skill is over and will come off the bottom, not the top of your health bar - that means if that extra health was all that was keeping you alive, you will find yourself with 1 hp and less if you don't act fast. You cannot rely on it for healing, it's purpose is to act as a buffer, like throwing on an extra bit of armor for a short while. The first is when you're charging into the enemy and you know you're going to take damage. You want it up so you can weather the storm of arrows and lightning bolts that ranged attackers are going to throw at you before you can get into clobbering time range. The second is as an emergency brake when your health is getting low. It buys you enough time to get out of danger, pop off a few HealSigs and get back to the fighting before it fades away. The second is really important to master when trying to survive this mission. Basically, you want to save Endure for when you're getting spiked out then use it to run away like a little baby in order to heal. It might seem cowardly, it might unman you in front of your soldiers but if you die the mission's over. But what you want to avoid, more than anything, is flashing it up in the middle of the fray and then Sigging off right where you were standing. That's a surefire recipe to attract focus fire that's going to wipe away both the bonus health and the healing you're summoning from the ether. You want to be behind a rock or your immortal allies (If they're killed, they'll come back, eventually. You? Not so much.) and in relative safety before you try and push your red bar back up.

That's me talking advice to myself by the way. Stupid Rex, have to keep in mind I don't have a healer monkey.

Our next encounter is a bunch of Paragons on a bridge backed by yet more Giants and a Defiler. Sigh, it's like this game knows what gives me problems.

Past that it's a huge group with our first Effigies and Acolytes. Those are the Elonian undead Eles and Monks, respectively. I can see some of Joko's minions lurking around the back, too, so I must be making progress here.

My mistake, those were Acolytes of Joko who turn out to be lv15 Necromancers. I had a bit of a tense moment with the Thought Leaches surrounding them, though. Hit with massive degen, my health was bottoming out. I threw up Endure and raced away from danger, then Phantom Pain expired and I got slammed with a Deep Wound. I couldn't sig up fast enough to keep my health from bottoming out as Endure was wearing off. Fortunately, neither Endure or degen can kill you by themselves. I was stuck at 1 health with four pips of degen and desperately hoping no enemy noticed to wand me off. But, whew, I survived.

Then, there's a choice between three bridges to cross. Each is guarded by a group of undead. It looks like if you take the rightmost one guarded by the largest group including some Clay Giants, you can skip some fights beyond them. The middle route is a medium sized encounter with some Paragons. And the leftmost one is the smallest group but, afterwards, you have to dispatch several more smaller groups to procede which might take a while. Since I'm not in a rush, I went left and mopped up the small groups one by one.

After that, we arrive at the fateful bridge where I and Palawa are to have our duel. I wave off my helpers because I'm an idiot, apparently, and stride forward to meet Mr. Joko alone.

It's a tough fight, he's a life stealing Necro, and there's no retreat and no way to run him around. I'm pretty much going Korean here and Sigging it as soon as I'm even breathed on. But I manage to land a clutch D-Blow on a Vamp Gaze and stomp off a Life Siphon which sets me up for one last adrenal spike to finish him off.

Cutscene time! We're totally redoing 300 now and... Holy crap! Clong to the head with the shield! I am totally flipping out now!

Er, not really. Kinda trying too hard to be cool to be cool for me. But definitely a nice use of the game's cinematic engine.

Hey, look it's up on YouTube now:



Reverse the order of D-Blow and Stomp and that's pretty much how my fight went, too. Although I got a little more degened at first as I was trying to spy out his bar and his casting patterns. Generally, when I have the choice, I like to cast skills with longer recharges (Like Giant Stomp's 30 as opposed to Distracting Blow's 10.) first because that means you're more likely to be able to use them again in the space of the battle. That's just me, though.

Whew. Finished just before I had another brief internet outage. But I got it done.

And I feel good about that because this is the most difficult mission. For me, at least. Comes down to playstyle. But it's not completely brainless. You can't win this mission while you're eating a sandwich, checking your e-mail, talking on the phone, and trying to catch up on your TiVo. You actually have to pay attention to what you're doing. Which is, you know, a good thing. It's the lack of a healer, more than anything else, that prevents this from being a C+Space button masher. And I like that. and I think that there should be a range of difficulty represented here. I don't mind that one mission is harder to get through than the rest (Even though the rewards are the same, apparently.) and I wouldn't mind if one one them even had the Master's tag. Because just like you need easy missions to keep the bottom half of the player skill level entertained you need some harder ones for the people out for a challenge. I'd put myself in the latter group. The absolute bottom percentile of it but, still, I'm someone who's seen and done it all when it comes to Guild Wars and I don't scare easily. You have to throw some pretty nasty stuff my way before I start getting worried about completion. This mission doesn't go that far, exactly, but it's closer to the direction I would want while still retaining the fun factor.

That said, this is a fun little mission. You roam around in an armored tower of hitpoints with massive AoE damage, slaughtering everyone in your path. Not at all hard if you're a little careful and remember to heal up every now and then. I still prefer Togo's but definitely well done.

BMP Grand Prix: Togo and the Tengu Accords

Before we begin, again, I should point out that this series is being done "live bloggy" style. Which means that I did most of the stuff I'm talking about some time in the past and, while I was doing it, I jotted down some thoughts and comments in the form of a running journal (Or, to those who would denigrate my sanity, an ongoing conversation with myself. We are inclined to believe these people are more than likely right about us.). And, now, some time later, I've taken those notes and spun them into a post legible for those who haven't suffered the unique form of head trauma responsible for someone like me. I try to refrain from editing or altering my thoughts and, instead, to keep things as true to my opinions and insights at the time. It's like getting a peak inside the diary I write in my head, basically, and while it might not be one-hundred percent live, it's as close as I can get to replicating the emotion, the excitement, of exploring something new. But, y'all don't want to hear me, you just came here to read, so without further ado, it's...

Togo time!

Togo's story is about how he ended the Tengu Wars and something about an ambush or betrayal of something (If I were a generous armchair critic I'd say that the writers were engaged in what we, in the biz, call "foreshadowing". Alluding to Togo's eventual fate in Factions with events of his past. But, then, these are the same people who thought up the Undead Lich so....yeah, I don't know if I can give them that benefit of doubt.). I'm too busy looking at the pretty psuedo-Japanese (style?) in his book to care about the backstory, honestly. Mmmm....pretty.

I guess all the narration is going to ominously repeat the last line in the book, huh?

Anyhow, Togo's staff is a channeling one and his bar does not disappoint with Essence Strike, Spirit Burn, and Spirit Rift. Those are ronded out with Disenchantment, Mend Body and Soul, and Offering of Spirit. Like, Saul (I'm sensing a pattern here.), he also has a few outrageously awesome new skills.

Call to the Spirit Realm. Binding Ritual. 25en, 3cast, 30recharge. Create three level 7 Spirits. These Spirits deal 30 damage with atttacks. These Spirits die after 60 seconds.

Dragon Empire Rage. Enchantment Spell. 15en, 1cast, 30recharge. Unleash the rage of the Dragon Empire bloodline., dealing 300 damge to all nearby enemies. For 15 seconds you gain 200 maximum health.

The first, telephone, lets you summon your own private army of spirits (Called Anger, suffering, and Hate. Hee!). This is a good thing.

The second, although it doesn't say, requires rage. It's grayed out and I'm guessing it's like adrenaline, it'll build as you go along, but there's also a little bar down there for you as well.

In case you can't tell, Togo's a spirit spammer and one who's bar depends on getting a lot of spirits out and supercharging his skills. Not a lot of healing which worries me but what can you do?

For stats he's got Channeling of 14, Communing of 11, and Restoration of 10. If he has any Spawning Power, I can't tell at all and I'm not about to sit there and try to figure it out. 550 Health and 40 energy, plus the 10 from your staff again. Might as well be bolted on to you because you can't swap to something else and you don't have an item skills.

Togo looks like, well, himself. But younger and clad in drabber attire. It's brown instead of his normal resplendent purple. He's accompanied by a pair of royal guards with him and his mission is to track down some peace delegations, talk to them, talk to the lord of the huge mountainside estate I'm wandering into (Map says it's somewhere to the east of the Kurzick territory), get betrayed, kick ass, and find some bubble gum to chew.

Oh, hey, there's Talon acting all NPC like. Hey Talon! He even has an exclamation point over his head, how cute.

As expected the minister is evil and tries to pull a Braveheart on you. He sets all the guards in the room on you. They're lv10 Warriors and all I have to say about that is that Spirit Rift is fun.

Weird. Once your rage meter is filled up you can use the Dragon Empire Rage skill normally. You don't have to refill it by killing more stuff it just recharges for you. Well, that's more high damage AoE nuking for me, then.

For the fight, you get the named Tengu as allies. There's a Necro, a Ranger, and Talon on the tank.

After the guards are mopped up some Sins pop out of the woodwork. They're lv15 and a bit harder but die all the same.

After that, looks like it's time to hunt down the minister and kick his lying and no doubt bony arse up and down the mountains. I lose two of the Tengu since they're going to stay behind and have a tea party or whatever but I get to keep Talon with me. He will, what's the word? Ah, yes, tank while I Rift off the enemies near him. This should be fun.

The Sins are annoying. They like to head straight for my spirits and that can wreck my energy curve. I find that camping in the middle of them and letting loose a rage blast tends to work wonders, though.

Ahahahahahah! Big huge group of guards. All lv10. Caught them all with a Rage Blast. Oh man, I wish I had a screenshot of them as they all pitched over and planted their faces in the dirt in unison while a swarm of gigantic yellow numbers float to the heavens like their newly released souls.

Now this is totally Kung Fu movie time. I get a cutscene introducing my opponent, Yuri the Hand. And then it's time for a man to man fight. Well, okay, a man and tengu on man fight. So cool.

Despite what he says it's not a quick fight. Although not exactly a challenging one either. Basically, it's spam all the skills I can on him while pausing to throw a Mend Body at Talon every now and then. But he uses a bunch of Sin healing enchantments and my Disenchantment just can't get rid of them fast enough so it takes a while to spike him out.

Round two! It's Riyo Tamaguchi time! This is totally Enter the Dragon stuff. I'm loving it. I hope there's a giant black man with a vision problem up ahead.

He's surrounded by a bunch of "students". I figure I'm going to have to fight my way through them but, no, they back off and let me have my duel with him. Riyo's also a spirit spammer so this could get messy.

Talon doesn't seem very interested in fighting. Then I realize I've bodyblocked him in. Whoops. And....now I've been spiked out. Ouch. Riyo'S tough. He uses several of th skills I have along with Boon of Creation and more for healing. I got a bit careless and stood in the middle of a forming Spirit Rift tring to peg him with my DDs while my health was low. Oh well, time to restart.

You know, the scenery here is really nicely done. On this second trip through I really have the time to appreciate it. Because it's not like the fights are challenging. Mostly because Dragon Rage Blast one hits almost everything.

Oh, and I fogot to mention the Skeletor mask on Yuri. Looks like something out of a Jim Balent book. I so want that for my own Sin. I managed to time my Disenchantment spirit much better with this rematch, though, so the fight went much faster.

On to Riyo again! My strategy this time? Stick and move, stick and move.

Also to use the time he spends speech making to walk up and lay my spirits. Then, once he uses his, Dragon Rage them out of existence so his skills don't meet their conditions. The mega nuke on his own health bar doesn't hurt, either - thing is affected by armor but it still hits him for 200+.

Surprisingly, the students don't turn hostile and try to gangpile on me for revenge. Maybe the are learning.

The guards in the next room where my next two opponents are waiting, though, do. Some well timed Dragon blasts and Spirit Rifts - basically, if you have trouble here just wait for them to ball up to swarm you and, then, take them out - take them out and it's time for the main event.

We're definitely playing by Kung Fu movie rules since the bosses play nice and take me on one at a time. Saddly, there's no NBA stars moonlighting as silver screen badasses. Instead, first up it's the big bad's lovely bodyguard. The comely Captain Sunpu. She's a hammer Warrior (With Forecful Blow?) who gets into a duel with Talon which lets me Rift and Rage in her face. Yeah, her strategy needs a little work.

After that blah blah blah, Wona, you killed my brother's peace accords prepare to die. The evil minister what did you wrong is an Earth ele, by the way. He's got huge range and some AoE spells making for a tough fight. You have Rage of the Dragon Empire making for not such a tough one. It's just hard to keep your spirits up if he gets them and since he uses Ebon Hawk/Stoning, you'll need to keep Talon clean with MB&S or else he's in for some hurt. While he's got a lot of armor, it's still not hard to chip him down.

After that, it's cutscene time wherein we learn why some Tengu are green and why others are red in Factions.

As for Discovery Mode, I've heard from various sources that the reward for finding the bonus objectives is something like a few plat each. So, in total, you can earn something like 8~10k (I'm getting conflicting reports.) gold. That's money in the bank and good to know but doesn't exactly encourage me to replay and figure this stuff out. Instead, it's more like I'll wait a week or two until the diligent explorative types comb through and figure out what they are, the best ways to accomplish them, and then post them up on some forum or wiki for me to grab and run with because I'm not interested in the mental challenge of figuring them out, not so enamored with the content as to want to replay it over and over again, and I don't really need the money at the moment, if at all. So, we'll just be skipping those entirely for the time being.

Before we move on, a one word review: Awesome.

This mission is pure awesome and I only wish it went on for 36 more chambers of rumble-esque boss fights. It's fun, it's fast paced, and it's got some great humorous touches while still taking itself seriously. Could be a little tougher, if you ask me. That Dragon Rage skill turns everything into a laugher. But it would also be hard to finish the mission, as constructed, without it.

I'm probably in the minority on this (I am, after all, a complete Johnny on these things.) but in a preplanned mission, like this, with a preset bar, I'd rather have been given something lousy like Nightmare Weapon and struggle to make it work, somehow, rather than be handed ungodly powers right out of the gate. It's nice to watch the big numbers and everything but it's not actually satisfying. A fleeting pleasure because it lacks a sense of challenge. And if I'm not pushed to some sort of limits then there's no adrenaline rush, there's no enjoyment, and it's just not fun. Hand me a bag full of crap and let me make the most out of it and, while I'd be groaning and making fun of the designer's skills at build construction (Like all players, I can always find something to complain about and cheerfully will.), I'd feel much better about myself when I actually did finish things off.

It's the difference between getting a T-Ball trophy and winning the Little League division championship. One's an accomplishment, the other is just an inevitability. And, yeah, yeah, general audience and bottom half versus top half of the playerbase and all that. I'm not saying the developers were wrong to make these fun little missions as easy as they reasonably could I'm just saying that, for me, that doesn't work as well as it could.

But, for this mission, the design, and the script make up for it. We'll find out if that holds up, so join us again next time when we slip into Turai's skin and see what a Warrior's life is like.

BMP Grand Prix: Saul and the Rise of the White Mantle

As I expected it took less than 12 hours for detailed walkthroughs to go up on the wikis. All except the one I really need, of course - Turai's mission gives a frensigger like me fits. But even though it's rather unnecessary I'm still going to go through with this series and detail my trips through the bonus mission pack.

Okay, so the deal is this. Saul's staff is a Monk's. Togo's is a Ritualist's. Turai gives you a sword and shield so, yeah, Warrior. And Gwen's going to be a little Mesmer. I'm guessing that's going to be the flavor of each mission. Since I've been playing a Monk a lot lately, I went with Saul, founder of the White Mantle for my first run. Boy, was I mistaken but we'll get to that in a while.

It's about Saul, obviously, and how he leads his followers to battle back the Charr when they tried to invade Kryta with one, final suicide mission. Sounds promising.

You start off with Saul overlooking your ragtag army. He looks nothing like I imagined him, be rather scruffy and, well, white. I always pictured him as a black dude or at least Kytan caramelly colored, kinda Brazillian thing. The perils of filling in backstory that I've already thought about, I guess. He does sport a huge White Mantle cape, though.

Saul's bar is a Monk/Mesmer one heavy on the signets. Oh, I knew I was in trouble when I saw it was a Smiting staff. It also features a few brand new skills which kinda defeats the point a little if you ask me but, hey, whatever.

You'll have 550 health and 50 energy to work with. And since you can't look at your stats, a little detective work reveals that you have 16 Smiting, 10 Inspiration, and 2 Domination.

He's got Castigation Signet, Bane Signet, and Unnatural Signet. Along with Mantra of Inscriptions so at least the designers aren't high on the supercool. Then the special skills kick in. He has Banner of the Unseen, Form Up and Advance!, and his elite is called Signet of the Unseen.

Banner of the Unseen. Ward Spell. 15en, 1cast, 10recharge. Create a Banner of the Unseen at your location. For 5 seconds, all allies in its area are healed for 25 Health each second. When this spell ends, all allies in its area are healed for 100.

Form Up and Advance! Shout. 10en, 15recharge. All Saul's trusted White Mantle followers fall back to your location and run 33% faster. For 10 seconds, all moving allies are healed for 15 Health each second.

Signet of the Unseen. Elite Signet. 1cast, 7recharge. Target foe and all nearby foes take 80 damage and are knocked down. If any of those foes are summoned creatures, those foes begin Burning for 6 seconds.

Those skills don't have any variables but since you can't mess with your stats, it doesn't matter.

Okay, so the Ward is a cheesy kind of Heal Party and probably what you're going to have to rely on for healing. It's 225 health over 5 seconds across whoever's in the ward so that's not bad.

The Shout is super-Fall Back! It's also going to act as a way of controlling the NPC army you spawn with.

And I'm going to learn to love Unseen Sig since that's super-Judgment on an insane cooldown with MoI up. Damage seems to be affected by armor, though. Oh wait, no, I'm wrong. It's holy damage. What I'm seeing is that it sometimes doubles against the undead.

Yes, that's only 7 skills, I imagine you either get one along the way or you do without.

Anyhow, you start off in a little path just in front of a Krytan village besieged by mid-level (ie lv15~18 Charr). The map says this takes place somewhere north of Beetletun. Along with you are some White Mantle troops - the usual smattering of Knights along with some named NPCs. As soon as you move the town is attacked and you're forced to defend the villagers as those named NPCs (Including old pals Habilion and Dorian) become allies forming an eight person party. They range from lv16~18 themselves and include two Warriors, a Ranger, an Elementalist, A Necro, a Mesmer, and a Monk (Who actually has healing spells, not the lame sig stuff I'm running.).

Since Dorian's the only Monk and I have to rely on running around and placing wards to heal anyone we get hammered pretty badly. After a certain point I stopped worrying about healing and concentrated on blasting away since massive AoE damage is fun. A few in my party get killed but they're rezzed up quickly once the Charr are dispatched.


Okay, now that I have time to see what I'm doing here, the quest log tells me I'm going to earn a whopping 500 gold for this (Along with that perfect weapon. Um...yay?) and that I need to let people say their goodbyes and gather by the gates. There's also a little meter on my screen now that says Charr alert level. It is empty and not moving so I'm taking my sweet time and typing this all up.

In the village are various bombs you can pick up. Rations will restore nearby allies for 100 Health. While Explosive will deal 100 damage to nearby enemies. The Barbed Bomb will do 100 damage, as well, and also cause bleeding for 5 seconds. 5 seconds? Really? While the Stun Bomb will knock them down. And the Balm Bomb will remove 3 conditions from adjacent allies. They all have an infinite supply but the only problem is that you have no weapon swap which is how I usually handle getting rid of a bundle. My "Drop Item" icon is burried under so much stuff I don't even know where it is in my UI and it's the only way to get rid of the things. Little detail but still annoys me. I've had to do some tweaking because I think these things might come in handy. Since I already do a ton of damage and can't heal worth a damn, I'm taking the Rations.

Once I finish mucking around with pots, I head to the gate where the NPCs I remember from Prophesies are patiently waiting while their wise, holy, and most sacred leader who's going to lead them to salvation as the world ends is acting like a time-wasting moron. Just like good little AI. We head out the door, the rest of the group in tow and....you have got to be kidding me.

Apparently the point of this mission is to skulk around avoiding combat because the more Charr you kill, the higher the alert level rises and when it's full bad things happen. Freaking Krytan stealth missions. I want to kill things with my uber-sigs.

Ugh. Well, I have to head to the back of the camp and kill the Charr leaders so maybe there'll be a little combat to sate my bloodlust. I, though, have no idea where I'm going since there are no green arrows to guide me.

Super-shout does make for quick and easy travel, though.

Oh, good, as I explore further, running from all red dots like they'll give me some kind of horrid pox, there's some dialog telling me where to go. Thanks game. It'd be better if the path was, you know, actually readily apparent but at least I'm not stumbling around completely lost now.

It also says I need ot hurry because dawn's approaching. Ha, yeah, I'll take my sweet time, thanks because that's not actually happening until I get to the right trigger.

Still running and hidding like a punk. Managed to elude all the patrols so far.

Ran into the first patrol I couldn't avoid. Only six or eight enemies - including a lv28 Charr Beast ele thing that just...wouldn't...die. And now my Alert level's almost full.

The stealth portions are almost comically easy. I imagine someone will post a map/guide soon enough and better than I ever could but, in general, you want to veer right and if the game puts a deadend little niche in your path it's probably a good idea to duck in there until the oncoming patrol passes.

Found the camp, now to avoid the patrols while I get to the back and find the Titan effigy the bosses are around.

There are three of them. Gathered, alone, in fron of one of those wooden flaming deals that old school Charr are so found of. There's a Necro, a Ranger, and a Warrior. Not that it really matters. They die easily enough.

Killing two of them fills my Alert meter. Killing the third triggers a cutscene where the Murssaat gate in and I'm still rocking my huge barrel like I'm headed to the worst kegger ever.

And then my frat brothers show up for some hazing. Evil hazing.

Now, I get three new Mursaat allies including Optimus Caliph, twee! He's an Ele, the other two are also Proph bosses, a Mes and a Necro but I remember Optimus because a) the name. And b) he's a tough son of bitch to put down. We're squared off against the Charr army gathered before us to block our way.

I also get to rock Spectral Agony now. It's that mysterious 8th skill I lacked at the start. Unfortunately it's not the ultra mega, instant death version the Mursaat get. Although still very nasty.

Spectral Agony. Hex Spell. 5en, 1cast, 8recharge. For 5 seconds, target foe moves, attacks, and uses skills 80% slower, suffer 4 Health degeneration, and loses 80 Health each second.

Now we have to survive against 4 warbands. I'm jinxing myself but so far it's pretty easy. It doesn't hurt that my dead allies will revive when there aren't any more enemies near.

3 down now. So far my winning strategy consists of standing in the healing wards and spiking the hell out of everything that comes in range. There are many things to call this but compelling gameplay is not one of them.

Stupid internet connection conked out on me right in the middle of the final wave and now I have to start all over again. That sound you don't here is me swearing profusely. I've been having little hiccups all day - sort of a "yeah, you're connected, whoops, now you're not, ha ha! Ah, just fucking around with you." kind of thing - and I came back from one to find myself wiped out. Lag 1, Rex 0. Fun.

Still, it's not exactly long or hard, especially if you're not pausing to gaze at your navel.

The trick to the "survive the onslaught" portion, I think, is to let the Mursaat tank for you. They have Spectral and a ton of armor and health, it seems so you want them to take the brunt of the damage while you hang back and use Form Up! as needed to draw your forces back to the saftey of your wards (There's your healing stuff but your Ele also uses Elements, too.) as needed (The Murssat, not being White Mantle don't listen to it.). The high priority Charr are the various Ash ones since they're Orders spammers who'll summon minions from the plentiful corpses. Or they're annoying Rits. And the Sootreigners since they'll drop Firestorms on your head. Basically, you want all the casters dead. The Charr Beasts are annoying PBAoE guys but they're also well armored tanks. You can't spike them out quick so focus on downing the easier prey and put a Spectral up on them.

Okay, finally back to the point I was before and, yes, where I dropped was in fact the last wave to deal with. So aggravating. Cutscene rolls as scores of White Mantle pour in. After the battle is over. Freaking useless White Mantle.

And, uh, spoiler alert but the Mursaat? They're not really nice people after all.

Back to Durmond I go. As promised, you can "authorize" the book which prevents you from trading it, I guess. I could care less about a perfect rare weapon at this point so it's not much use to me. As promised, though, you can replay the mission (Same exact way as the last time, there's no special button or anything) and unlock "discoveries". So, it's Prhopehesies mission bonuses all over again. I'm going to leave that for later though (Although a quick run through seems to indicate they won't be so hard to figure out as the game prompts you with "historical points of debate". For example, I got one asking if Saul could have saved the villagers in the attack on the village. Hmmm...wonder what that could be implying?)

Now, if you'll excuse me, time for some of my thoughts as a review. Not exactly hard although a mite more difficult than I feared. Surviving the waves of attacking Charr isn't quite effortless but it's not exactly going to tax you, either. I wasn't really trying the first time and if it hadn't been for a faulty connection, I would have had it. No troubles the second time around. My main problem with this mission, though, is that I really, really hate stealth elements. I have all these neat toys for killing and I have to skulk around avoiding combat? Lame. Overall, though, a nice little mission that's only whet my appetite for more.

Guild Wars: The Bonus Pack is Here!

The Bonus Mission Pack went live some time this evening. I dove in headfirst as soon as I noticed. Although I haven't played everything through just yet, I have dabbled in all the bonus missions enough to get a sense of them. I smell a new series to dribble out slowly over the coming days (Even though I should really get around to posting the last of the Dungeon Dives first, eh?).

You can read the details yourself at the official site but the basic idea is that there's a new group of NPCs in the major cities (ie LA, Kamadan, and Kaineng.). There's Durmand, the Historian. Talk to him and you get access to the bonus missions. He'll give you one of four books as well as some weapons for most. Saul's and Togo's come with staves, a smiting and channeling one respectively, while Turai's with a sword and shield combo. They're all max damage but lack any sort of mods. Gwen's tale is the only one to come without a weapon of some sort (I haven't managed to get the elite quests that she adds done yet so I don't know if there's any bonus for bringing the Rose Focus, say.).

To get to the missions you need to open one of the books he gives you. They give some background along with some awesome looking artwork (Really like the Togo book, best of all, but they're all bang-up jobs. Great to see that sort of thing since the game's always had strong concept art.) and an annoyingly ominous voiceover along with our old friend the enter mission button, provided you've equipped the proper weapon first.

When you're in the mission you'll be under a disguise, transforming you into the main character and fixing your stats and skills. You won't be able to adjust your attributes, in fact, if you open up your skill panel you won't even see them. Same thing goes for your inventory - can't open it at all, no bags, no armor, no nothing - and Hero tabs. You also have no weapon set bubbles and can't swap your weapon, even to an empty set if you wanted to, say, dump some energy. But there are also no drops of any sort to collect so it really doesn't matter much.

In each mission you'll be handed a preselected skill bar. Just what depends on the mission at hand, of course, as do your new health and energy stats but they all include some specially made, big Timmy skills for you to play around with. You'll be on a quest that you can look up in your log but it's of the instanced type and, if you're killed, you'll be returned to the outpost you were at (It doesn't matter where you start from once you have the books and gear) to try again. If you win, you'll get 500 gold and some book pages.

The books work like the Dungeon Master's Guide and Player's Handbook from GW:EN in that they have missing pages you'll fill in by completing the mission. Then, you can talk to Durmond again and get them authorized. Once that's done you can take them to the [Scribe] NPCs nearby. There are four, one for each book, and there you can select from an assortment of rare weapons with unique skins. They're collector weapons which means perfect stats but no mods of any sort. The skins, as far as I can tell, are brand new and not repeats. Personally, I'm one of those "Yeah, it looks nice but what are the stats?" kind of players so I couldn't tell you if they look nice or not.

Also, once you've completed the mission (And, note, not after you've authorized. You don't have to turn your book in for your stamp of approval first.) you unlock Discovery Mode which means you can head back in and try to accomplish some bonus goals. Something like Prophesies mission bonuses, basically. I haven't bothered to do it myself but, from what I've heard, they involve some extra challenge and at least one in every mission is related to how quickly you can beat it, like Factions. You get more gold for beating those.

As I said earlier, I've tried all the missions by now. Saul's a signet smiter with some sweet overpowered stuff. You do some stealth stuff and then it's a survive the onslaught deal witht he Mursaat at your side - and, yes, you do get to use Spectral although you don't start off with it. Young Togo (Who still looks, like, 45.) gets to star in his own Hong Kong action movie with some assists from the Tengu. He's a solid spirit spammer with some eye-popping tricks. The Unghostly hero is a bug stomper as you romp around the desert destroying undead with a ton of hit points and armor (But, no Monk. And, worse, no run buff.) and some big damage skills leading up to a fight with Palawa. Finally, Gwen starts her off with only four skills and all of them related to sneaking around and hiding from the enemy. Her stage is all about escaping from the Charr.

Here are the bars you start off with:

Saul (550hp, 40en)

• Smiting Prayers 16
• Inspiration Magic 10
• Domination Magic 2
  

• Signet of the Unseen {E} (unique)
• Castigation Signet
• Bane Signet
• Unnatural Signet
• Blank
• Banner of the Unseen (unique)
• Mantra of Inscriptions
• Form Up and Advance! (unique)

Smiting Staff (en+10, halves recharge 20%)


Togo (550hp, 40en)

• Channeling 14
• Communing 11
• Restoration 10
  

• Call to the Spirit Realm (unique)
• Essence Strike
• Spirit Burn
• Spirit Rift
• Mend Body and Soul
• Offering of Spirit {E}
• Disenchantment
• Dragon Empire Rage (unique)

Channeling Staff (en+10, halves recharge 20%)


Turai (700hp, 25en)

• Strength 11
• Swordsmanship 14?
• Tactics 14
  

• For Elona! (unique)
• Dragon Slash {E}
• Whirlwind Attack (sunspear)
• Distracting Blow
• For Great Justice!
• Endure Pain
• Healing Signet
• Giant Stomp (monster)

Sword (15~22)
Tactics shield (AL 16)


Gwen (300hp, 20en)

• Domination Magic 10~12?
• Illusion Magic 12
  

• Flee (unique)
• Throw Rock (unique)
• Hide (unique)
• Feign Death (unique)
• Blank
• Blank
• Blank
• Blank

Of the four, I've beaten Saul and Gwen. Came close with Togo but I nubbed it when I attacked when I should have healed. Turai I was just trying to see how far I could get with my rambo impression. Turns out the answer is: pretty far. Playing it for real I think I need to slow down, realize I don't have a healer, and be a bit smarter about when I Sig up or Endure out. I got a bit caught up with the Godzilla act as I stomped on the undead swarm. It's probably going to be the hardest for me because of my natural C+Space tendencies.

Gwen's, on the other hand, is depressingly easy. Once you figure out the trick at the beginning that I'm not going to spoil, anyway, it was just a fairly straight forward run.

But, of the four, I think Togo's is my favorite. It's got a great kung fu, action movie vibe to it with just the right touches of humor and lore blended together. I suck at playing a spirit farmer, hate the very concept, but it doesn't even matter.

Overall, though, it's definitely not worth buying. Not that you can, but it's no more than $5~10 worth of content, if that. The missions are short, but sweet. There don't seem to be any major rewards for them, either. It'll keep me occupied this weekend, I think, and maybe a bit longer depending on whether I want to track down all the discoveries (At this point, it really depends on what the rewards are. I'm not going through all that effort of replaying them unless there's something worthwhile for my troubles. And that needs to be better than the rewards for mission bonuses, I think.).

But they don't, for me anyway, add much to the story. They don't explore the interest parts of the lore and the parts they do are ones that I'd have imagined better than they actually play out anyway - the whole Saul thing, for example, is just jarring. We don't get to see how he meets the Mursaat initially or why they choose to help him. And the outcome doesn't reveal anything that someone who's played through Prophesies wouldn't know (Although it does set up a return, down the line that might pay off... One day.) I don't get the point. Or the Turai mission. It tries to recreate the middle of a pitched, massive war but Guild Wars just doesn't scale up well and it shows.

Don't get me wrong, the missions are worth playing through if only for the novelty. And as an added bonus on top of things you've already bought, they're priced right. They're certainly an interesting use of the game's engine and one I wouldn't mind seeing more of some how, some way. I mean, I'd rather have the Costume Brawl back but this is the sort of thing you could fob off on a neophyte quest designer or three looking to climb up the ladder and then release every so often as a way of refreshing content and interest. Makes a good model for tutorial style content in GW2 as well. But if they ever offer a retail version of this, I'd definitely pass unless they sweetened the deal a lot more.

Guild Wars: BMP Release Date Announced, Kinda

They were sneaky and hid it deep within the electronic corridors of the wiki but I still found it. But it's confirmed by Gaile on the talk page. It's coming out on the 29th. Not exactly a big surprise as you had to figure that “this month” meant “as late as we possibly can without looking like we're going back on our promise” in dev speak. I think I can safely speak for the entire GW NaNo club when I say, whew!

I was worried it was going to come out this Friday and take my weekend with it. By coming out at the end of the month it's not going to interfere with my closing death march across the keyboard of destiny. And, instead, it'll be a nice little treat waiting for me once I get this novel gone. You know, like GW:EN was supposed to be before I predictably broke down.

Granted, I shouldn't get my hopes up too much. The Costume Brawl which featured a similar “become someone else” mechanic was great but, when you get right down to it, the bars there were, by and large horrible. It's only because everything else was similarly suboptimal that it didn't matter and the even playing field could shine. The prospect of well-designed mission encounters that are difficult without simply having the quote unquote difficulty knob cranked up is probably a slim one. Instead, we're likely to get janky bars and missions designed for the general public - ie, so simple a microencephalic could do them. Frankly, I' expecting things like a meta-thievery bar for little Charr stomper Gwen - all echoes and arcane thieveries. I don't know what other characters you'll be running but I suspect it's going to be Hamstorm Warriors and touch Rangers and the like.

Still, bonus content is bonus content. And maybe, just maybe they'll be a shiny reward waiting for me for completing the thing. It'll probably have to wait until that weekend for me to get around to it, though.

Guild Wars: Mission Bonus Pack Q&A

Developer interview about the Bonus Mission Pack up at the official site. Conveniently, it finally reveals some details about two weeks before the offer expires so, yeah, good timing there. However, for people like me who are still on the fence (And looking for a little post-NaNo present) it comes at a good time. I'm of two minds after reading the interview. First, I'm put off by the idea of playing historic characters with set skill bars. That's just not Guild Wars to me. The game's all about being able to pick and choose and customize in order to meet a specific challenge. I want to do that myself, not have the developers do it for me. But here, I don't even get to select a henchie team to run with, it's a solo mission with pre-packaged skills. That might be fun but it's not really why I play the game. I was pretty much expecting some kind of time warp with my existing characters and possibly some fat loot to be found instead of some loregasms. We're not even getting new maps, as the pack is just going to use some old maps with some new skins.

On the other hand, reusing old maps with new textures sounds like finally harnassing the power of instancing. And that's definitely something I'd like to see the developers do more of. And while I'm skeptical of the developer's definition of "challenge" which mostly seems to involve cranking up levels and slathering debiliating effects on everything, the promise of environments customed tailored to a preset skill bar does sound promising. Like the developers might be able to pull off some interesting tricks. But, again, I'm worried that it's all going to be laid out on railroad tracks. That there's going to be one way to go through these missions, one way to make a purse out of the pig's ear of skills you're handed, and only one narrow vision for how these missions are to be played. If there are multiple paths, different options, separate routes that can be followed to success depending on how clever or quick you are, well, that's a different story.

Valuing this pack is difficult because it comes as an add-on to content I'm buying anyways. I know I'm not going to be shelling out $30 just to play four missions that sound like the developers have been playing around with the basic game format a bit too much with. But if I pick up GW:EN though the online store - where I just realized that I get a minor discount on since I own the other chapters - then it's basically free. But I'm really not too keen on GW:EN, either. But I have to admit, the combination of the two is mightily tempting. And, as I said, a carrot for finishing my November project might be awfully valuable...

Guild Wars: Bonus Mission Pack

So, the Bonus Mission Pack. I've been meaning to talk about this for a while but, eh, you know how it goes. Anyway, the idea is that if you spend a certain amount in the online store by a certain point you'll get a code to unlock some bonus content. So, spend $30 on things like GW:EN or to get three new character slots or whatever by October 31st and they'll throw four new missions in for you. Historical missions that let you play out battles and scenarios from the game's lore. Including at least one that sounds pretty important, story-wise, to the current expansion.

On one hand, it's a giant crock. A transparent way of driving up sales in the online store where, presumably, the profit margins for NCSoft are a bit better than your average brick and mortar joint. I mean, I'm not surprised or anything. It's a company and their goal is to wring as much money out of their customers as they can. But, you know, when I heard about it my first impulse was “Okay, now what can I buy in the store that'll add up to $30?” I mean, I haven't heard much about the missions, their length, whether I'll have to use pre-constructed characters or I'll be able to warp my own characters through time, somehow, to participate or anything of the like. All I knew was that there was something more to buy. To explore. To participate in.

And, you know, I'm hardly even playing the game at the moment.

So, if the lure was that strong for me, I can imagine what it's like for someone else who's been living and dying with the game. But, after a bit of thought, I'm not sure it's a worthy purchase, after all. It sounds like it's going to be just four extra missions and that's not exactly worth $30 to me. Not even if we're talking about massive Thunderhead Keep, “it just keeps going on” or epic dungeon crawlers like the Domain of Anguish. I rather prefer the shorter, more focused missions over the lengthy, involved ones you need to get some non-AI help for (I know, I know, I'm killing the game.) anyway. I wouldn't go out of my way to spend $30 just for the experience. However, if you're already going to spend that money on something else, it's not a bad bargain. Say you're hoping to get the x-pack, well, pick it up from the online store and you'll get those four missions as a bonus. Still, I can't escape the feeling that it's a rip-off, somehow.

On the other hand, this bonus mission pack is the sort of thing I'd hoped to see all along out of ANet. They've never leveraged their ability to stream new content to players as effectively as they could. About the one time they've gotten it right, I feel, was with Sorrow's Furnace. During the long lull between the original release and the first expansion, Factions, they put a brand new dungeon into the game. Not only a new dungeon but they also used it to implement the green weapons that players crave so much. It was a new place to explore with rich new veins of XP to exploit and it came with a bucket load of new loot? Sold. And they released the whole thing free of charge. I wasn't playing at the time but it quickly became a favorite when I came back to the game shortly after. It was great proof that the developers were going to be hard at work not just cranking out expansions but also working to improve on the existing content. Because, remember, at the time Factions was off on the horizon and there was a real question about whether a game without a subscription would get that kind of support.

Ah, but it wasn't exactly free because, at the same time, they also rolled out the online store and one of the first things they offered was a bonus music pack. It contained new songs and such for the new area but if you wanted them you had to shell out a bit more. My PvE soundtrack is supplied by WinAmp so I didn't bother and, thus, can't recall how much it cost at the time. That I wasn't alone in my apathy, it's no longer being offered, and that particular business model was never followed up on suggests, to me, that it was a resounding failure. But while (as always) the execution was lacking the seed of offering some additional content at a premium was planted.

But, for whatever reason, such offerings have been few and far between. The developers will tweak quests and update NPC skins but outside of Sorrow's Furnace there haven't been many big projects delivered to the players (I'm not really counting the Domain of Anguish because it was always supposed to be there, it was just a feature that was running late. I'm looking more for examples of large content added to the game as a bonus. Like the holiday stuff but, you know, permanent.). I can't think of one, actually. And, there, I think the developers missed a big opportunity. They could have been streaming sidequests and bonus missions to us all along. Injecting them into the game when there's a lull, say, in order to give flagging attention spans and enthusiasm a boost. A quest cycle here, a mission pushing the boundaries of what instancing can do there[1], and the game would have been much better off. And if they want to make a bit of profit off of it?

ANet and NCSoft have to make money, after all, so I really don't begrudge it to them. I don't think it's unreasonable to offer, say, another dungeon or different weapon skins or say a group of new heroes at a nominal cost. Especially if they're not essential to enjoying the game and, so, not a requirement like coming out with a new pack of skills to buy for $15~30 would be. I'd certainly rather they were offered for free but I'd also like my next car to be a gold-plated chariot drawn by ponies.

In other words, getting everything I want from the game is unrealistic. Because what matches my needs and wishes isn't necessarily what's best for everyone. I understand this and I understand that I'm not always going to get my way because, sometimes, the developers have to take other people into account, sad as that may be.

Still, with the chapters and expansions and updates we have I think those developers fell into an easy trap. The one that because they were delivering new content, because they were releasing new product for people to buy, that they had to make it worthwhile. That they had to pack enough value into it in order to get people interested. It's an attitude that suggests going for the big improvements and holding off on the smaller ones. But just like with skill updates where it's better to have frequent little rebalancings rather than one gigantic laundry list of changes – the better to test, the better to absorb, the better to seem like you're responding to concerns – the new content the developers provide could be parceled out in more discrete packages. An update every month or two which adds a handful of skills, a dungeon or two, and maybe a new profession. Fed into the ongoing game instead of disrupting it with a big splash. I'd like to have seen more updates like Sorrow's Furnace, in other words, and not necessarily for free. This Bonus Mission Pack comes a bit late in the day, but it's a good model for how the game can be added to in the future. Small, compact, offered for small fees without a retail box, for the people who really want something more to enjoy.

[1] – Instancing is another missed opportunity, if you ask me. When the game was still months away from release, I remember how it was being hyped up. Talked up by the developers. And, yeah, by fans and forum dwellers like myself. But not only was the non-subscription revolutionary, not only was the streaming technology revolutionary, but the power of instancing a shardless world was going to be brought to bear on creating an amazing gaming experience. What you did in a mission or a zone was going to have permanent, lasting effects but only for you. For your own personal version of the game, in your own private timeline, you'd be able to topple kingdoms and burn down bridges, actually impact the game world. And when you returned the consequences would still be there. But a new player coming along would have their own opportunity to create their own consequences, too. The game's storyline would be flexible, mutable, personalized but bending and twisting around different versions of events and outcomes depending on who you were grouping with. If you wanted to rerun a mission, you'd warp to an instance where you'd never run it before, like traveling back in time. If you wanted a world where you didn't burn down that bridge, there'd be a way to create that alternate reality. Somehow. At least, that's how I understood it. It didn't really work out that way, though, and instancing became just a fancy way of saying “We have lobbies that branch off to reduce stress on our servers. Oh, and no killstealing.” Nice but far from the revolutionary awesomeness it originally hinted at. But, you know, the game I built up in my head was always going to be better than the one I actually wound up playing.